


and we are the hunters

by bacondestiny



Series: we are the hunters [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, F/M, Minor Character Death, No Love Triangle, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 76,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29964861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bacondestiny/pseuds/bacondestiny
Summary: “And now,” Oulo declares. God, his accent really is stupid. “For the boys!” He crosses to the bowl and pulls out a slip, and Mikasa doesn’t have time to think anything at all before he announces, “Eren Jaeger!”A bell tolls in her head.Oh, no,Mikasa thinks.No, not him.Anyone but him.For the first time since Isabelle’s name was called, Mikasa genuinely begins to panic. Because there is no way she will be able to kill Eren Jaeger.
Relationships: Mikasa Ackerman/Eren Yeager
Series: we are the hunters [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2206026
Comments: 86
Kudos: 70





	1. we fell on hard times and we lost our bright colors

**Author's Note:**

> I saw some art of Mikasa and Eren as Katniss and Peeta in Catching Fire and dropped everything to start writing this au a few weeks ago. 
> 
> I was gonna hold off on posting this bc I was afraid it was maybe a little ooc but uh pining eren is canon now and I can't hold back my eremika feels so I'm going to subject y'all to them. check the endnotes for more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from "The Ballad of Lucy Gray Baird" by Suzanne Collins

The day of Isabelle’s first reaping, Mikasa is up before the sun. She has traps to check and errands to run, all to be done before two in the afternoon when all of Shiganshina will be crowded together in the town square. 

At some point in the night, Izzy had crawled into Petra’s bed. Little Ben is sprawled on top of both of them, and all three of them are dead asleep and snoring like bears. The cat, Sonny, snoozes in the crook of Isabelle’s bent knee, but wakes just enough to stretch and blink at her before she heads out the door. 

She rolls her eyes and scratches him behind the ear, prompting a cute little _mm-mRR-mm._ Mikasa has to force herself out before he can beg for more affection. She’s fonder of that cat than she ought to be, but he’s been part of the family longer than Ben. Izzy had found him as a half-dead kitten in the meadow and tearfully brought him to Mikasa; Mikasa had tearfully brought them both to Levi; Levi had suggested mercy-drowning the kitten, sending them both into hysterics before Petra had taken over the situation. Sonny had been the most spoiled cat in the district for two years, but he’s a loyal little bastard, and these days he’s a lean, mean, rodent-killing machine.

Mikasa appreciates that. God knows she has enough mouths to feed.

It is entirely too lovely a day for reaping day. The birds sing. The early summer flowers are blooming in full force. The sun is just beginning to rise over the mountains, lighting the world up with soft blues and shy pinks. Even as she pauses to appreciate its beauty, Mikasa almost resents it. It shouldn’t belong to this cruel day. 

She sneaks through the fence and into the woods with no trouble, retrieving her brother’s bow from a hollow log. The tiny one that he’d made for her when she was young is still there beside it. It’s waiting for Benny, should he want it one day. Isabelle certainly has no interest. That girl is as sweet as sugar, with as much stomach for violence as a teaspoon. Mikasa holds out hope for Levi’s son, but if he refuses it too, then she supposes it will for her own children, if she chooses to have them. 

A big, big if. She’s not sure she can bear the thought of bringing children into this world.

Despite her dark thoughts, the morning insists on treating her well. Her traps have caught three rabbits and two squirrels. She makes her way to the mountain stream so that she can cast her net and gather. She wants to get something special for tonight. Either she’ll be celebrating another year of safety with her family, or it will be the last time they have Mikasa’s fresh food. 

Her name is in that reaping bowl twenty-five times. But it’s not so many, really. There are kids in her class who have more, to say nothing of the older kids. Mikasa is still just sixteen. 

She’s only sixteen.

God, is she really sixteen already? Has it really been so long since Levi died? It seems like it was yesterday. But she’s sixteen and today it is Isabelle’s first reaping, and Ben hasn’t even been alive as long as his father has been dead and somehow he’s seven years old. 

By the time the sun is halfway towards its zenith, Mikasa has added a dozen fish to her game bag, as well as a gallon of strawberries and a sack of wild onions. She tosses the nets back over the strawberries, pulls out her fishing net, and sets the traps before she leaves for the black market. 

She makes good deals. Nearly everyone is feeling generous towards her today, and anyway, they like her. She’s the best hunter in the district, or at least the most reliable, and she keeps half the district supplied with fresh meat and wild herbs. She can afford to be a hard trader. Her last stop is the mayor’s house to trade off the wild onions. She’d gathered them specifically for his daughter. 

Historia envelops Mikasa in a rib-cracking hug when she sees them. "Thank you, Mikasa."

Mikasa pats her shoulder. "You're welcome."

They’ve known each other since they were very young. Levi’s status as a Victor had meant that the Ackermans were in the town’s upper class, and Historia had been the only girl in that tiny circle so close to Mikasa’s own age. Even after her brother’s death, when they’d been stripped of Levi’s winnings and cast out of his house, Historia hadn’t abandoned her. They eat lunch together in school and pair up for projects, and Historia consistently pays too much for Mikasa’s wares. Not that she's complaining. 

"You look pretty," she compliments. "How do you feel?”

Historia shrugs. "I've got five slips in there. Not so bad."

"Not so bad," MIkasa agrees. 

She shrugs. “Speaking of, should you go get ready? Oh, do you want to wear one of Frieda's old dresses? There's this lovely blue one, you know you look pretty in blue—ah, but wait, it would clash with your _scarf.”_

“Shut up.”

Historia grins. “I didn’t say anything. But I mean, you will be wearing it, won’t you?”

“I'll take back the onions,” Mikasa threatens. She will be wearing the scarf. Of course she will. 

Historia puts her hands up. "Sorry, sorry. But for real, you can get ready here if you want. I’ll make you look so pretty that the boys will drop dead before the reaping even starts.”

“Ha, ha. No, I already promised Izzy that I would let her do my hair.”

Historia pouts. “Fine. Next time, though! You owe me a makeover.”

Mikasa knows what she’s trying to do. “Next time,” she agrees, knowing there’s no way of knowing if she can keep that promise.

Historia hugs her again, tighter this time. “I’ll see you in the square, okay?”

Mikasa squeezes her back. “I’ll see you there.”

***

It’s a bit of a walk back to the Seam, where the house they’ve lived in since she was nine is. When they’d first been moved, Mikasa used to get lost between downtown and her new home, but she learned the way easily enough. Just follow the coal dust. The people who manned Shiganshina’s mines lived in this shabby part of the town, and even when they crawled back out into the open air every day, they tracked enough of the underground with them that their residential district is permanently coated with coal dust.

Izzy’s three-legged-goat, Bean, _baas_ a greeting to her when she returns home. Petra is attempting to dress a loudly protesting Ben, and Izzy is mostly all dolled up already, petting the cat. Mikasa kisses her little niece on the forehead and sets her bag on the table, announcing, “I’m home!”

“Thank you, Mikasa,” Izzy says, moving Sonny off her lap (sincerely apologizing to him) so she can wash the strawberries. Sonny brushes his cheek against Mikasa’s legs, and she rolls her eyes and tosses him a scrap of raw rabbit. He picks it up off the floor and runs off to eat it in private. Soon, there will surely be a dead rodent in the house. Sonny’s gift in exchange. 

“Your hair’s a mess,” Mikasa scolds gently, instinctively smoothing it down. “Get me a brush, I’ll braid it.”

Izzy produces a comb, making Mikasa think she had probably _wanted_ Mikasa to fix her hair. God only knows why; Mikasa’s braids aren’t very good. But she brushes through Izzy’s fine hair quickly and braids them into auburn pigtails. 

“Can you tie it into bows?” she asks, almost shy. “Your bows are the prettiest.”

“That’s a grave insult to your mother,” Mikasa says, but accepts the white ribbons anyway. Mikasa used to play with her hair all the time when they were in the Village, so she guesses it’s still a comfort to Isabelle.

The back door opens and she hears Petra come in. “The cat has bloody scraps; Mikasa, honey, are you back?” she calls. When Mikasa confirms, she says, “Good. The bath is all ready for you, and I’ve laid your dress out! I’ll have lunch ready by the time you’re out.”

The bathwater had cooled from boiling to lukewarm, but that’s fine. Mikasa scrubs the day’s dirt off and washes her hair in the old wooden tub, even using the remains special, scented shampoo that they carried with them from Victor’s Village. It feels stupid to dress up when her stomach is a cold pit, but on the other hand . . . it’s one of the very few times a year that she has the occasion to dress up. When the reaping is over and she’s safe, it will be nice to look pretty. 

The dress is one of Mikasa’s mother’s. It’s gray, with bright flowers stitched across the long, straight skirt and sleeves. Mikasa has never seen a dress quite like this, but then she’d never seen anyone look like her or her mother, either.

She doesn’t remember much of her mother. Her parents had died when she was just four, and the only record of their image that still exists is the footage from Levi and Petra’s wedding. Still, Mikasa knows that she looks almost exactly like her mom. She has her gray eyes and black hair, her nose and her chin and the way her body was built. Her eyes partially take after her father’s in shape, and maybe she has the Ackermans’ full mouth and soft cheeks, but . . . When she looks in the mirror, she sees Azumabito Sakurako. 

She wonders what Levi would make of that. 

Izzy comes into the back room and joins her in front of the mirror. If Mikasa is undeniably her mother’s daughter, then Izzy is undeniably her father’s. She has her mother’s hazel eyes and her hair is a mix of her parents’, but she has Levi’s nose and mouth, his delicate bone structure and the shape of his eyes. She’s a pretty child, small for her age and shier than a mouse. She’s wearing Mikasa’s first reaping outfit: a clean white dress and a pink cardigan from before they left Victor’s Village.

Mikasa wonders what Levi would make of _that._

“You look beautiful,” Izzy says.

“I’m not done yet,” Mikasa says gently. “You promised to do my hair for me.”

She doesn’t smile, but her eyes light up a bit. Izzy loves to play with Mikasa’s hair, so she sits and lets her get to work. It’s a quiet ritual. Isabelle’s hands shake every once in a while, but there’s little Mikasa could say to calm her. Izzy’s name is in there _once,_ she is as safe as possible, but she’s worried on Mikasa’s behalf. There’s nothing she can say that will make her stop worrying. 

Mikasa’s name is in the reaping bowl twenty-five times. Five for her age, and then another twenty times in exchange for the tesserae rations for herself and her family. Nineteen years ago, Levi Ackerman’s name was in the bowl twenty-four times. Even better odds than her, but still he was taken from his home and forced to fight twenty-three other children to death in the eightieth annual Hunger Games. 

By one o’clock, Mikasa’s hair is done up in a complicated braided bun, her scarf is around her neck, and the Ackermans have choked down what little lunch they could stomach and begun the walk to the town square. The atmosphere grows tenser by the moment. Izzy is glued to Mikasa’s side. Even Benny has stopped griping, instead holding fast to his mother’s hand. 

When they reach the square they have to split up. Mikasa and Izzy to the reaping pools, Petra and Ben to the back. “You’ll be fine,” Petra tells them. She mostly succeeds at a reassuring smile. “We have a lovely supper at home, and we’ll have a great time tonight. Okay?”

Izzy is shaking. “Okay,” she whispers. 

Petra crushes her daughter to her chest. “Don’t you worry about a thing, baby.” She kisses her forehead, then she turns to Mikasa and pulls her down for a hug, too. “Don’t worry. It’ll be okay.”

“I know,” Mikasa lies. She hugs Benny, too, the little boy clutching her around the waist, his face pressed to her thigh. Any other day she would smile as she pulled him off, but not today. She smiles bravely for the boy with her brother’s eyes, and thinks, _Did Papa tell Levi everything would be fine, too?_

She takes Izzy to the registration booth, holding her hand. Her other hand is fisted tightly in her scarf. They check themselves in and Izzy is parted from her, directed to the back of the eligible crowd with the other twelve-year-olds. Mikasa shuffles around until she finds her age group. Historia is there in a pretty green dress. Mikasa takes the hand she offers but fails to smile back. 

The meager lunch of tesserae-grain bread and yesterday’s squirrel has turned to lead in her stomach. The Justice Hall looms above them, the paint of Shiganshina’s crest of blue-and-white wings faded and peeling. Up on the stage in front of her are two giant glass bowls filled with slips of paper. She wonders if any of the ones she can see pressed against the sides bear her name. Her free hands winds itself up in her scarf again. It smells like the woods, now, but it still comforts her.

Considering all of Shiganshina has packed into the square and the surrounding streets, it’s awfully quiet. No one is really in the mood for chit-chat. It’s near-silent when Mayor Reiss begins the ceremony: the long history of the wars and disasters that Paradis rose up from; the Dark Days of the districts’ rebellion against Mitras; the price they now pay to ensure against another uprising. The history of the Hunger Games and Shiganshina’s small place in it: they’d had exactly three Victors in ninety-nine years, only one of whom still lived. Hannes bought her wares and paid her well on the rare occasion that she dropped by. At least, on the even rarer occasion that he wasn’t too drunk to open the door.

He’s drunk now, up on stage. Mikasa feels some disgust for him—her brother had gone through the same thing and come through a fine man, a good son, brother, husband, and father, but _Hannes_ was the one who was still alive—but more pity. He had kept her brother alive all those years ago, and he has never been anything but kind to her. When Mikasa was young enough to be crawling into Levi and Petra’s bed seeking comfort, never once had Levi not either already been awake or snapped upright with fire in his eyes before recognizing her. Mikasa knows better than most how deep Victors’ scars go. 

Eventually, the speech ends. The Mitras escort, Oulo Bodaoz, stands and all but skips up the podium. He chirps out the customary, “Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor!” gives his brief speech, then says “Ladies first!” and crosses to the girl’s bowl, plunging his hand in.

All eight-thousand-odd people in Shiganshina draw in a breath. Oulo rotates his wrist and pulls a slip of paper out. Mikasa’s heart is pumping ice water through her veins. He walks back to the podium. Her fingers squeeze tight around Historia’s; both of their hands are stiff and clammy.

He smooths the slip of paper, leans into the microphone, and Mikasa’s hand is fisted in the red scarf that has always meant hope, meant _life,_ and Oulo Bodaoz calls out, “Isabelle Ackerman!”

***

It’s a mistake.

It has to be. 

There is _one_ slip of paper that reads Isabelle Ackerman among thousands. It’s impossible. It’s _unthinkable—_

Belatedly, Mikasa realizes that Historia has an arm around her waist, is whispering in her ear. The smaller girl is holding her up. She can’t understand what she’s saying; in her head Isabelle Ackerman is echoing, and each time she hears it it feels like a blow. 

_No. No, not again, not again, it’s happening again—_

Mikasa stands up straight and whips her head around. There—just passing by, Izzy’s coppery hair. Mikasa’s old white dress, her old pink cardigan. Her tiny, delicate face, drained of blood, her stubborn Ackerman mouth wobbling. 

“Izzy,” she whispers. Historia’s arm tightens around her waist, rising like she wanted to try and pull her back; Mikasa breaks the grip like she’s a child—like she’s Izzy, weak, fragile Izzy—and darts through the crowd. _“Izzy!”_

Her little niece looks back, hazel eyes wide with fright, and Mikasa breaks out the crowd just before the stage, grabs Isabelle’s wrist, and yanks her behind herself. “I volunteer!” she says. _“I volunteer as tribute.”_

The crowd was already muttering— _like Levi Ackerman, isn’t that Levi Ackerman’s little girl?_ —and now it begins to really stir. Shiganshina hasn’t had a volunteer in . . . ever. The stage, just in front of them, is full of confused faces—Oulo Bodaoz looks disappointed—but he says, “Oh, uh. Lovely. Not protocol, but . . .”

“What does it matter?” Mayor Reiss grunts from behind him. “Let her up.”

Isabelle screams then, cinching her arms around her. “NO! No, Mikasa, you _can’t,_ you _can’t go!”_

“Isabelle, let go,” she says. All the emotion has left her voice. It’s left her body. Mikasa feels like she’s been carved from stone. 

_“No,”_ wails Izzy. Mikasa reaches to her hands to pry her off, and _their fingers are the same shape, did she ever notice that before?_ and something pulls the negligible weight off of her back. Mikasa turns and sees Historia, her eyes filled with tears, arms full of a screaming Izzy. 

“Thanks,” she says. At least she thinks she does. She climbs the steps and joins Oulo, Mayor Reiss, and Hannes on the stage. The thought _Levi should be here_ drifts across her head, and she doesn’t know if she should be wishing that he was.

“Well, kudos to you!” Oulo says. “That’s the Hunger Games spirit! What’s your name, dear?”

Her mouth is dry. “Mikasa Ackerman.”

His eyes light up. “Ah!” So he didn’t lose a precious legacy tribute, good for him. “That was your . . . niece, was it?”

She nods. 

“Well. How exciting! Come, everyone, give a big round of applause to our volunteer!”

The crowd is silent now. Oulo claps by himself. Not even Hannes is drunk enough to think what she just did deserves cheering. In the crowd: there’s Kathe, who sits next to her in school, there’s the butcher who buys from her every week, there’s the baker; there, in the back, is Historia clutching a sobbing Isabelle. Their faces are all full of some combination of respect and pity, and someone, somewhere, puts their first over their heart. It’s like a ripple, emanating out from a spot she couldn’t place, but within seconds, all of Shiganshina is saluting her. 

Emotions kick back to life in her chest, and Mikasa has to bite her lip to keep from crying out. She curls her hands into fists to keep them from doing something stupid like clutching at her scarf. It’s a childish gesture, and not one she can do on camera. 

Luckily, Hannes takes this moment to rear to life. He staggers to his feet and marches across the stage to throw an arm around her shoulder and use the other to ruffle her hair. “That’s Mikasa for you,” he shouts, slurring. “Always w’s a good girl! I like you, kid—always did like you better ‘n y’r brother!” Mikasa tries to shrink away, but he has a hand clasped on her shoulder now. “God _damn,_ full of fire, that one! You too, girlie.” He picks his head up and looks straight at the camera. “More ‘n you!” He releases her fully and heads for the camera, pointing directly into it. “More than— _ack.”_

He falls off the stage. 

The pity for him that Mikasa feels is, at that moment, vastly outweighed by the disgust. She’s grateful for it. It gives her something to feel other than abject terror. 

Hannes is carried away by Military Policemen and Oulo tries to get things back on track. She hadn’t seen any of the others, but Mikasa would bet that this is the most exciting reaping of the day, and it’s only halfway through.

“And now,” he declares. God, his accent really is stupid. “For the boys!” He crosses to the bowl and pulls out a slip, and Mikasa doesn’t have time to think anything at all before he announces, “Eren Jaeger!”

A bell tolls in her head. 

_Oh, no,_ Mikasa thinks. _No, not him._

_Anyone but him._

She finds him in the crowd instantly. He makes his way to the stage with dignity, but Mikasa can see the utter astonishment in his eyes, the way his hands are clenched into white-knuckled fists. That’s probably only because she’s spent years studying him, though. 

Oulo calls for volunteers, but none emerge. Eren, she knows, also has a much older half-brother—far too old to take his place, if he were so inclined. He might not have been. Familial obligation only goes so far on reaping day; what Mikasa has done is a first. With a disappointed sigh, Oulo concludes the reaping itself, and lets the mayor begin closing the ceremony by reading out the long, dreary Treaty of Treason. It goes in one ear and out the other. For the first time since Isabelle’s name was called, Mikasa genuinely begins to panic. Because there is no way she will be able to kill Eren Jaeger. 

When Levi had died, Mikasa’s world had come to a screeching halt and thrown her in the dirt. Not even touching on the grief, which had been intense enough that Mikasa felt like the very sun in the sky had been ripped from her, those next few months had been the worst of her life. The Ackermans had been ousted from their home in the Victor’s Village, stripped of their wealth and most of their possessions, and left out to dry. Mikasa had been nine, Isabelle five, and Petra had been heavily pregnant with baby Benny. Between grief and a difficult pregnancy (then a frail, sickly newborn), Petra hadn’t been able to find much work. The coal mines that employed most of the district simply weren’t an option with the baby, and the odd work she was able to pick up while toting a sick, wailing baby wasn’t much. They’d had at least a roof over their head—the old four-room house in the Seam that the Ackermans had lived in before Levi won the Games—but nothing else. 

Mikasa had helped where she could, with the baby, with the chores, with what work she could, and most of all by taking care of Izzy—but it hadn’t been enough. They had been dying. The baby cried all day. Mikasa stopped filling out her clothes. Izzy got lighter, but Mikasa stopped being able to pick her up. One day, Petra had been unable to nurse baby Benny; Mikasa had realized, suddenly and with a level of calm she couldn’t fathom, that they were going to starve to death. 

She’d gone out to do something. She didn’t know. Maybe she had been looking for work? It was late winter, and the rain that poured down had felt like bullets of ice driving into her skin. She walked through the district, hunting for something, and ended up in the upper end of town, where the merchant class lived. She’d had some notion of asking if she could work in exchange for food, but when she’d knocked on the first door, she’d literally been too weak to be heard over the pounding rain. She had shuffled into an alley, hunched over, trembling from exhaustion and the cold. She had leaned against the bricks of the shoemakers’ place, so, so weary. Her stomach was so empty it felt like it was lined with knives, punishing her for being so weak. Her heart felt like it had been scooped out, the wound jagged and bleeding, she missed her brother so much. Maybe she would feel better if she just went to sleep . . . that sounded nice. Maybe Levi would be home when she woke up. 

But then a voice had called out above her. She looked up on reflex, squinting against the rain, and was nearly hit in the face with a red bundle falling from the sky. 

It landed at her feet, making a small splash in the mud. Mikasa stared at it then looked up. 

A boy her age with the prettiest blue-green eyes was leaning out of a window fifteen feet above her. She knew his name, didn’t she? He was in her grade at school, but in the other class . . . He gestured meaningfully down at the bundle. She looked back at it again, then numbly bent down to pick it up. As soon as she did, he slammed his shutters closed and disappeared. 

She unwrapped the bundle. It was in fact a scarf, tied tightly around two perfect loaves of bread. She stared at them in disbelief for a long, long moment, and then wrapped the scarf back around them, tucked them under her shirt, and ran all the way back to their house in the Seam. 

Petra and Izzy had both cried at the sight of the bread. Petra had warmed it back up over their meager wood-fire and made them eat it with thin mint tea. It was good, hearty bread, full of nuts and raisins. They ate one whole loaf that night. Even baby Benny had had a share of carefully smashed bread and loose raisins. In the morning, Petra had been able to nurse, and the Ackermans had cried all over again. 

Petra had washed Mikasa’s clothes and dried them on the fire overnight, including the scarf. She had stared at it for a moment before putting it on, intending to give it back to the boy at school that day. Petra had kissed her girls on the foreheads and sent them off with instructions to be safe, and in the late winter sunlight, the scarf had Mikasa feeling warmer than she had felt in the months since her brother had died. 

The boy—Eren, she heard him called—didn’t acknowledge her when he passed her in the hall. Even when she tried to call out to him, his scarf in her hand. She’d taken that, combined with the fact that he’d closed his window as soon as he could, to mean that he had no interest in talking to her. He had done her this unfathomable kindness already. She wouldn’t ask for anything more. 

Still, when she and Isabelle were walking home that day, she’d felt someone looking at her from across the schoolyard. She’d turned her head to find him staring at her. Their eyes met for only an instant before he violently turned away, and Mikasa had taken the cue and looked away, too. 

Her eyes had caught on a delicate purple bellflower, and Mikasa felt lightning race through her body. She knew, right then and right there, that her family was going to survive. And that it was because Eren Jaeger had given her the chance. 

That afternoon, she’d taken Izzy to the meadow on the outskirts of the district and gathered a giant bowl of flowers. Bellflowers, dandelions, they’d even found some honeysuckle. That night, they ate flower soup with the last of the bread, and everyone in the house went to bed with full stomachs. Even baby Benny didn’t wake up crying. 

And the next day, she had gone into the woods for the first time since Levi’s death. She’d been too afraid of predators to go alone before, but she’d wrapped the scarf around her neck again, and she felt strong enough to do it. 

Not once, in the seven years since that day, has she spoken to him. She owes him her life, and her family’s lives, and she’s never even been able to work up the nerve to thank him. The most interaction they’ve had since then is that sometimes she feels him staring at her, but whenever she looks over at him he looks away.

Eren Jaeger is the _last_ tribute partner she would want. 

The mayor finishes reading the treaty and indicates that she and Eren are to shake hands. A show of good sportsmanship. They rotate to face each other and take each other’s hands. Eren looks her in the eye, but then his gaze drops down to her scarf— _his_ scarf, but he’s never asked for it back—then back to her face again. She thinks she sees him swallow. She thinks he squeezes her hand, but maybe that was more of an anxious spasm. 

They break apart and face the crowd as Paradis’s anthem plays. 

Today, it’s their funeral hymn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Yes, Isabelle is named after Isabel Magnolia; yes, the different spelling is intentional  
> 2\. There is no Gale character because--  
> 3\. Eren Jaeger is more Gale Hawthorne than Gale Hawthorne is Gale Hawthorne. trust me, I know this. But Mikasa is a better Katniss and twisting Eren, who thankfully becomes a manipulative bastard who was in love with a girl without telling her for a while at least, into the role but not the character of Peeta Mellark was a fun writing exercise. I'm asking that y'all trust me here, I tried really really really hard to keep both of them in character, and from the feedback I got I succeeded.
> 
> another reason I wanted to post this is because I feel like I kind of called a lot of Eren's feelings?? Before 138?? And I . . . am still suffering from brainworms.


	2. as rough as briar, like walking through fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from "Pure as the Driven Snow" by Suzanne Collins

Petra, Izzy, and Benny are the first to visit.

The room inside the Justice Building where the Military Police had herded her to say her goodbyes is the loveliest place she’s been in since she was nine, and rubbing her hands across the soft velvet of the couch actually does make her feel a little better. 

Izzy is still half in hysterics, and baby Benny—except, God, he’s not a baby, is he? How is he seven years old?—is wailing. They’re both half on her lap, and Petra had her arms tight around the three of them, crying quietly. Mikasa clings to them, memorizing the feel of them: the smell of Benny’s skin, the sound of Izzy’s breathing, the feel of Petra’s hair against her cheek. Slowly, choked, Mikasa reminds them of what they must do to survive. What plants they can eat and where to find them, who will be the most generous when it comes to trading Bean’s milk and cheese, where Levi’s bows are hidden in the woods, if they need them. 

“Don’t take out the tesserae,” she warns. “That goes for you too, little man.”

“I won’t let them,” Petra vows. “I shouldn’t have let you—Mikasa, _baby—”_

“Hey, it wasn’t my name that was called,” she says. “Just . . . we probably shouldn’t tempt fate, right?”

“Oh, baby,” she says. Petra is half a head shorter than Mikasa, has been since Mikasa was fourteen, but that tone of voice makes Mikasa feel about four years old again. “We’ll be okay. You worry about yourself, you hear me?”

She nods.

“You have to try to win,” Izzy sniffs from Mikasa’s shoulder. “You—you’re strong and you’re fast and you can hunt. Maybe you can win? Daddy won. And he taught you, right? I bet you can do it.”

“Maybe I can,” she says lightly. She can’t. Mikasa isn’t Levi, no natural-born killer with the grit to kill boys three times her size. But Isabelle never came along to hunt with them, so she doesn’t know exactly how much weaker her aunt was than her father. 

Baby Benny, of course, had never met his father, and he chimes in with, “Yeah! You’re the coolest person _ever,_ Mikasa. You can win. I know it.”

She brushes his bangs out of his eyes. God, but does he have Levi’s eyes. 

“I’ll try,” she promises. “I’ll do my best, okay?”

“That’s good enough,” Petra says. “You’re just as strong as your brother, baby. I know you can come home.”

Mikasa just tucks her face into Ben’s hair. They stay like that for a long while, but all too soon, an MP comes by to escort her family out. They’re guided out of the door with “I love you”s pouring out of their lips, and Mikasa tries to answer each one. She knows, deep in her gut, that this is the last time she will ever hear anyone tell her they love her. 

After a minute that she spends desperately fighting back tears, the scarf pulled over her mouth, the door opens again. That surprises her, especially when Carla Jaeger is behind it. 

Mrs. Jaeger comes in and, without warning, hugs Mikasa tightly. She’s so startled that she doesn’t move at all, only blinking in confusion until she pulls away. 

She knows the woman a little—she trades with the Jaegers sometimes, and it’s usually Mrs. Doctor who answers the door. She’s a lovely woman, and Mikasa certainly would have said they were friendly but . . . Mikasa is currently pitted against her son in a death match. It seems odd to receive this woman’s affection. She just said goodbye to her son, probably forever. How does she have any compassion left for her?

Why are the Jaegers such _goddamn kind people?_

“I’ll keep an eye on those children,” she says. “Make sure they’re eating.” She pulls back, and actually, genuinely smiles at Mikasa. “Your sister is a good woman. Your brother was a wonderful man. I’ll do right by them both.”

She has no idea what to say to that. Mrs. Jaeger pats Mikasa’s cheek and hugs her again. Mikasa can’t make herself relax into it, but she tentatively brings her own arms up around her shoulders. They sit there in silence until she’s summoned to go, at which point Mrs. Jaeger says, “You should know, Eren . . .” But then she sighs and shakes her head. “Well. He’s a good boy. And you’re a lovely girl, Mikasa. Any woman would be proud to call you her daughter.” 

She leaves then, with a pained, lingering glance over her shoulder. She looks so much like her son in that moment that it feels like a punch in the gut. Maybe that’s also to do with what she said though. _Daughter?_ Did Mrs. Doctor just . . . feel bad that Mikasa didn’t have her own mom to say goodbye to, and wanted to step in, since she was already there? 

She doesn’t have the chance to dwell on it for too long, though, because she has one more visitor. Historia. 

Mikasa is fairly sure that she’s been hugged by more people today than she has been any other day since Levi’s funeral. “You know, Mikasa,” Historia says. “You could have just told me you didn’t want to do the makeover?”

That actually startles a laugh from her. 

“Listen here,” Historia says as she pulls back, mock-serious. Her voice is shaking, just a little. “I am far too small to be left alone. I’m going to have to remain at home until you get back or I’ll be stepped on.”

Mikasa rolls her eyes. 

“I’m serious!” she insists. “I’m not worried about _you_ one bit. You’ll be back home in no time. You’re gorgeous and badass; you’ll have a million sponsors. You get your hands on a bow and it’s over.”

“They don’t always have bows,” she murmurs.

Historia scoffs. “Then make one. You’re smart, you can figure it out.”

“Historia . . .”

The mayor’s daughter becomes truly serious. “Hey. Really. There’s no reason you won’t be back home this time next month. Put your back into it, Ackerman. I’m betting on you.”

Mikasa sighs. “Okay. Okay. But Historia—take care of my family. Please. Don’t let them starve.”

She clicks her tongue. “Like you have to ask. Watch out. I’m gonna be such a cool new aunt that the only reason you’ll still be cooler is because the next time you see them, you’ll be the Victor of the Ninety-Ninth Hunger Games.”

She’s trying to both cheer her up and motivate her, and really, it’s nearly working. Historia is a really good friend.

“That scarf is gonna be your token, right?” she asks.

“Hm?”

“Your token. You know, the one thing you’re allowed to take into the arena with you?”

“Oh.” Mikasa hadn’t considered that. “I . . . guess? No, I mean, that feels weird, considering that he’ll be in there too . . .”

“Well. Didn’t you say once that as long as you had that scarf, you felt like you could do _anything?”_

“Get out.”

Historia puts her hands up. “I’m kidding. It’s definitely your scarf by now. If he wants it back, he can fight you for it.”

Mikasa doesn’t respond to that. 

Suddenly, Historia is deadly serious. “Mika . . . you _are_ going to try to come home, aren’t you?”

“I am,” she promises. “But—I can’t—I don’t want to be the one to kill him.”

“You won’t be,” Historia assures. “There are twenty-four of you in there, and if history tells us anything, it’s that Eren Jaeger will annoy someone into attacking him instantly. Odds are you won’t even see him in the arena.”

Historia is right. Odds are. 

But the odds haven’t exactly been in her favor lately.

***

When they make it to the train, they’re dismissed to wash up and change before dinner. They walk together to their respective compartments--Eren’s is the next car after hers--in silence. It feels like she should say something, but really, what is there to say? _I hope I don’t have to kill you? Thanks for the bread that one time seven years ago? Do you want your scarf back?_

So she peels off without a word. 

The tribute’s waiting room in the Justice Building had been a level of luxury she remembered, but the train shuttling them across the country to Mitras is something else. She’d never actually been in one before. No cars, either. Levi had never taken his family with him to Mitras or anywhere else that he was dragged for Victor business. But really, Mikasa had thought their mansion back in the Village was fancy. She hadn’t thought this many crystals could possibly have a place in one room. The chandeliers, the doorknobs, studded on the lights in the hall. 

Her room has its own bathroom with a shower. Mikasa hasn’t taken a shower in years. She’s still clean from her bath earlier, but it’s something to do, and this shower is almost as glorious as the ones she remembered. 

She takes her hair down and brushes it out. It’s really too long, especially her bangs. She’s been meaning to ask Petra to cut it for her but it kept slipping her mind, and now—

She changes into a clean white blouse and a long black skirt, but elects to keep her hunting boots. After a long moment of consideration, she puts the scarf on, too. She doesn’t tie it properly, just wraps it loosely around her throat once. She and Eren are probably going to talk to each other for the literal first time in their lives, and she knows their history would have been heavy in the air, anyway. The scarf makes her feel safe, and she can’t risk that it will be taken and thrown away. 

Eren is already there when she comes into the dining car, also freshly showered and in new clothes. He’s wearing khaki pants and a green shirt that brings out his eyes. He’s glaring at the meal on the table with a mixture of disbelief and anger. He looks up when she comes in, and when he sees the scarf, he turns away. Mikasa blushes. 

“Mikasa!” Oulo says. “Good, we were just about to have supper. Come come, sit next to Eren there.”

Dinner comes in courses. Even Mikasa has never had a meal like this. It’s the best food she’s _ever_ had, and there’s literally no end in sight. Servers keep filling up any dish that has even a dent put in it. Oulo talks incessantly at them, cheerfully telling them all about the food, the train, the trip, the capital city of Mitras. He’s a silly-looking man with heavy makeup and coifed hair—his undercut is, she’s fairly sure, inspired by Levi’s—and the Mitras accent is so stupid sounding that it’s hard not to laugh every time he says the word “mahogany.” He says it like seven times in three minutes. 

Eren catches her eye once, brows raised, and Mikasa almost cracks up. She thinks hysteria is starting to set in. 

She almost cries when they bring out the dessert course. Suddenly she’s floored by memories of their old home—standing on a chair to “help” her mother make cake batter for her dad’s birthday, sitting on Levi’s lap as they ate ice cream on the porch, the way that Levi would give Petra chocolates when she was having a bad day, how she and Izzy used to steal from the cookie jar and Levi would pretend he didn’t notice. Mikasa hadn’t realized until that moment that she hasn't had dessert once in the years since Levi’s death. 

Also, it’s the best slice of cake she can ever remember having. That makes her heart hurt. It’s like she’s betraying her mother’s memory by loving this. 

She feels mildly sick afterward, unused to so much rich food. She notices that Eren looks queasy, too. Even the doctor’s son can’t quite handle Mitras food. Oulo either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care and leads them to another compartment to watch the recap of the reapings. She hadn’t caught any of the others, of course, and she realizes that this is her first glimpse of the competition. She makes note of the six kids from the career districts where they train kids until they’re eighteen and have them volunteer, and a few others that strike her. There’s a twelve-year-old girl from Trost who looks so much like Izzy that it breaks Mikasa’s heart. Her tribute partner looks like he could break Mikasa’s neck. 

As she watches Shiganshina’s reaping, she feels disconnected from her body. Isabelle’s name is called and the commentators immediately jump onto the name _Ackerman._ There’s barely time for them to get excited before on-screen-Mikasa yanks her little niece behind her and volunteers. Historia pulls her away--so she did thank her out loud--and Mikasa walks up, stiff and emotionless. The commentators are elated when she tells her name— _“Levi Ackerman’s half-sister!”_ —and confused when the district salutes her silently. Hannes makes an idiot of himself and they laugh it off. Eren’s name is called and he joins her on the stage. As they shake hands, Mikasa can see that his eyes drop to her scarf, but no one makes a note of it. Why would they? No one would be able to tell their history from that single glance. Probably not one other person in the country noticed.

The commentators, Dot Pixis and Nile Dok, who have been at it as long as she can remember, chatter about odds and predictions. They talk about her a lot. She’s a legacy and a volunteer from a district that never has volunteers. And she’s Asian. After a while, it feels like they’re talking about someone else entirely. She tips her head against the back of the couch and zones out, staring at the television without absorbing anything, her mind far away.

Levi had won the eightieth Hunger Games when he was seventeen years old. Mikasa had been born two years later in Victor’s Village, and that summer Levi had married his high school sweetheart Petra Ral. The ceremony had been lovely, better than what anyone else in the district would have been able to afford. Isabelle was a healthy, happy baby, and Petra’s pregnancy with Benny had been mostly seamless (until it hadn’t been). The Ackermans had had a warm roof over their heads and food on their table, and the world had seemed perfect. 

But her brother had never trusted it. Levi hadn’t always been a Victor. And he had won his Games for a reason. 

Their father and Levi’s mom had been from the Seam, and that was where Levi had spent the first seventeen years of his life. He was the son of coal miners and had grown up half-starving and rarely supervised, constantly having to defend himself from older, bigger bullies. One day, bored and hungry, he had whittled a stick into a spear and snuck into the forest. He’s stabbed a rabbit, skinned and cooked it poorly, and felt full for the first time he could remember. He’d spent the next eight years mostly in the woods, making himself into a hunter. It had taken him more than a year of trial and error to make a functioning bow, but once he had it, he had been an unstoppable huntsman. He hadn’t had one in the Games, but that hadn’t mattered.

As soon as Mikasa could toddle, he’d begun teaching her how to survive. He taught her about what plants were good to eat and which ones to avoid at all costs. She’d helped him skin and cook his kills since she could properly hold a knife. She’d been following him into the woods since she was four years old. He used to hold her hand and sing mining songs while they marched, to make her feel less afraid. His voice was so lovely that all the birds would stop and listen. She remembers that.

She remembers everything Levi had taught her. She’s been using it on a daily basis for years. The question is: how much good would it do her?

Mikasa can survive in the wilderness outside of Shiganshina. She can fight off medium-sized predators and keep herself fed. But what good will her skill with a bow be in the grappling fights that happened so often in the games? What good will her knowledge of Shiganshina’s flora be if they are dropped in a desert? Eyes are on her already. Maybe that means she’ll have sponsors, but it also means there is a target on her head. _Levi Ackerman’s sister._

Levi had won his Games in nine days. He’d killed sixteen people. 

Mikasa is not her brother. She’s never had to fight people before. Nobody had dared pick on her when she was a child for fear of Levi, and then afterwards there had been little reason to. Everybody knew she provided half the district with fresh meat, nobody wanted to be her enemy. How would she fare in a fight? She isn’t small like Levi had been small, but what good would a few extra inches do her in a fight against that dark-haired boy from Orvud? She’s strong enough to wield her bow, but that would count for nothing against the huge blonde boy from Trost. 

Mikasa’s eyes had drifted closed at some point, but a prickle on the back of her neck lets her know that someone is watching her. She doesn’t open her eyes. 

What is Eren Jaeger thinking about? If she knows one thing about him, it’s that the boy is a fighter. He’d gotten into so many fights at school, on his own and on behalf of his little friend Armin. He hasn’t accepted his death, she’s sure. Is he already planning to kill her? Is he regretting his gift that day, wishing someone other than her was going in with him?

Eren Jaeger is the son of Shiganshina’s doctor. Grisha Jaeger had cured the plague that had broken out years ago (not in time to save her parents), and he has steady business. He’s a good man, well-liked and respected: his family has never gone hungry. Eren has grown up groomed to take over the role of doctor, so he can probably treat wounds already. That’s a significant skill to have in the arena. He’s handsome enough that at least a few of the capital people will want to sponsor him, especially since he hit a growth spurt over the winter and stretched out a few inches. He’s aggressive and headstrong, and around the age of twelve he actually started winning some of the fights he picked. He’d joined the wrestling team the next year, and last she checked, he was the best in the school. His odds for winning aren’t terrible. 

So where does that leave the pair of them?

She shoves the thought away. She’s too full and warm and fragile right now to even begin dissecting their ghost of a relationship. 

But she still feels his eyes on her. 

Mikasa makes a big show of stretching, getting up and bidding them goodnight. Oulo bids her sweet dreams and instructs her to “wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, we have a big, big, big day tomorrow!” Eren says, “Goodnight, Mikasa,” quietly, and Mikasa nods so that her hair will fall in her face and leaves.

That night she dreams that she’s perched in a tree with Levi, the pair of them with arrows notched and aimed at incoming prey, wrapped up together in Eren Jaeger’s scarf. It’s snug enough against her throat that one wrong move would strangle her.

***

She wakes up groggy. The movement of the train and the softness of the mattress lulled her to sleep and didn’t let her go easily. For a long moment she’s confused as to where she is, until the events of yesterday slam back into her head and she doubles over.

 _Izzy,_ she thinks. _Petra, Benny. I’m so sorry._ She shouldn’t be, really. She’d saved Izzy, who would have no chance in the arena at all. She’d done everything she had to prevent Isabelle from being reaped. But still. She’s leaving them. Just like Levi. 

She showers and changes into a clean outfit, loops the scarf around her neck, brushes her hair and her teeth before heading back to the dining car. 

There’s enough food on the table to feed her family for a month: fruit and pastries and meats and eggs. Oulo greets her enthusiastically and begins chattering at her. It’s all nonsense and flattery--how very pretty she is, how very much she looks like her brother, how very charmed the people in the capital are that she volunteered for her niece. Mikasa doesn’t even try to get a word in edgewise. What in the world would she even say to this man?

After several minutes spent wolfing down chocolate croissants and eggs with green peppers (an odd flavor combination but they were both too good to stop eating), the door wooshes open and Eren staggers through, dragging a dripping-wet Hannes. 

“Gracious! Whatever happened to him?” Oulo gasps.

“Little piece of shit shoved me into the shower!” Hannes cries. “Dragged me out of bed!”

Eren dumps him into the closest seat to the door, scowling. “You have a job to do. You’re supposed to be mentoring us!”

“Mentoring?” he scoffs. “I don’t know what either of you could learn from me. Young Doctor Jaeger, Little Miss Ackerman.” He tips his head in mock-deference. “Ask that one, ‘m sure her brother had plenty to say.”

Mikasa regards him flatly. “Well, my brother is dead, so.”

Hannes grumbles. “Alright, alright. You want my advice? Stay alive!” 

He laughs for a second, reaching for a bottle of whiskey, but as one, with no communication, Mikasa grabs her butter knife and slams it between his grasping fingers while Eren punches Hannes square in the jaw, knocking him out of the chair he just threw him into. Eren stands above him, nearly radiating fury. Oulo shrieks at the indignity. 

“See, Mikasa and I aren’t particularly in a joking mood right now,” Eren says. 

Hannes grabs Eren’s leg and yanks him onto the ground. Eren falls with a little yelp and Hannes flips over to pin him down; he holds him for a moment before Eren breaks the hold and kicks him off. Mikasa gets up, grabs her fellow tribute’s hand and pulls him out of Hannes’s reach; he stands and the pair of them glare down at their drunken mentor. 

From the floor, Hannes blinks at them. “Okay,” he says. “A pair of fighters. I might have known.” With a sigh, he stands and shakes himself out. “Well, that’s something,” he says. “Alright. Okay.” He eyes them critically for a few moments. “Well then. Boy, you weren’t half bad there. You wrestle?”

“I’m on the team,” he says. 

Mikasa is pretty sure he’s the captain, but she says nothing. 

Hannes strokes his chin. “And you’re a bit of a looker there, young doctor. Not a bad start.” He turns to Mikasa and half-smiles. “And you, junior. Well. I don’t think I need to spell out what you have going for you.”

Her brother’s legacy. Her mother’s blood. Her volunteering. Yes, Mikasa is sure she has sponsors already. That’s a blessing. It’s almost impossible to win without the generosity of some rich jackass sending you gifts. Food, water, a blanket, weapons. At some point, the arena itself will test you. If nobody thinks you’re worth betting on, then you’ll just die. But if you’ve impressed the right people, then they’ll send you gifts to keep you fighting ‘til the end.

“Okay,” Hannes says. “Listen. You two don’t interfere with my drinking, and I’ll be sober enough to help you. Deal?”

She and Eren exchange a look. It’s not great, but it’s probably the only offer he’ll make. “Fine,” she says. 

“Great. First thing first, when we get into Mitras, you’ll be headed into the Remake Center. Let them do whatever they want to you, no matter how bizarre it may seem. The stylists know best what will appeal to the sponsors.” They nod. “Good. Good start. Be friendly with the capital people. Mikasa, you blew the stoic angle when you volunteered for Isabelle, and Eren, sorry, but you’re not intimidating enough to pull it off. Not with those cheeks.” He pats said cheeks, then stands. “I’m going to take a proper shower now, if that’s alright with you, young Doctor Jaeger.”

Eren swats his hand away and glares until Hannes walks out of the car. “Has he always been like this?”

“I think he’s gotten worse since Levi died,” she answers. “But maybe he just made more of an effort to hide it when I was a kid.”

Eren huffs in disapproval. “Super. What’s good for breakfast?”

“Oh, everything,” says Mikasa. “But if you like sweets you should try the croissants. Oh--the little triangle things there.”

“I’ve never had a croissant before,” he says, eyeing them. 

“They were Levi’s favorite,” she says. “The bakery back home makes good ones. We used to eat them all the time.”

Oulo surreptitiously takes one and puts it on his plate. 

Eren shrugs and puts one in his mouth, then begins loading up his plate. Sausages and eggs and fruit; between the two of them, this morning there had been more on their plates this morning than there normally is on her plate in a week. 

They eat in a silence that is almost amicable as they approach the capital. They’d made a good team there for a moment, and it wasn’t uncommon for district partners to form alliances early in the Games. Is Eren thinking about that? Or is he planning his own strategy? Surely he knows she’s a threat, especially as any sponsors looking to Shiganshina must be looking at her first. Is he already imagining how to kill her?

Oulo begins to talk at them again--something about his predictions on what they’ll be wearing, how Shiganshina just got a new stylist who’s just the oddest duck--but it mostly goes in one ear and out the other. Mikasa watches the landscape roll by. Mitras is in the center of the country, and Mikasa has never seen fields like this. All she knows is the ancient Maria mountains. It’s strange to think how much bigger the world is than their poor, tiny district. 

The sun creeps higher and the jagged mountains that encircle the capital creep closer. She moves to the last car, which is made for viewing. She wishes shshe had come out here last night and seen the stars. Levi once told her that you couldn’t see them in the city because of the light pollution, and who knows what the arena will be? She might never see the stars again. 

“Hey,” a voice calls softly. Mikasa starts a little and turns around to find Eren in the doorway. “We’re going through the tunnel that will take us into Mitras in a minute. Hannes said I should get you so we can wave.”

“Oh.” She stands. Eren waits for her at the door so that they can walk to the front together, and she still can’t find anything to say. Why can she never find the words to say to this boy? Why is it so hard to force out _thank you?_ She’s running out of chances.

They stand together as they enter the tunnel that takes them through the Sina mountains. If she had thanked him that day at school, what would have happened? Would they have been friends after that? No, surely not. He’s never seemed to want anything to do with her. But if she had thanked him then, would she feel so horrible now? Probably, yes, but she would have at least _acknowledged_ the debt she owes him. It would have been a start. 

_Is_ she going to be able to kill him? If it comes down to it, how will she kill the boy who gave her the scarf? And what about him? He saved her life. How does he feel about undoing that work? He won’t have the same hangups as she does, but still. 

Light begins to filter through the tunnel, and almost as soon as she realizes that, the train shoots out into daylight. She blinks, readjusting her eyes, and when she can see again she sees a strange new world. They race through the city on an elevated rail so quickly that everything is a blur, but what she can see is all colossal buildings made of glass and gardens full of unnaturally bright colors. 

The train begins to slow as they approach the Remake Center, where they will be prepped for the opening ceremony. The train begins to slow, so smoothly that she doesn’t even stumble, and descend. With a start, she realizes that what she had taken to be colorful tiles is actually a crowd gathered to welcome them. The people here are only vaguely recognizable as human. Most of them have dyed skin or strange tattoos, exaggerated makeup and bizarre outfits. 

Mikasa blinks in surprise. The crowd is cheering and waving enthusiastically, and she’s so caught-off guard that she can only respond with a little half-wave, which sends them into a frenzy. Eren looks at her with an unreadable expression, and then they pull into the station. 

She shrugs, defensive. “Hannes said to be nice. One of them might be rich.”

He clenches his jaw. “Suppose so. Still. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to pander to these people.”

That irritates her. Everyone knows you can’t win the Games without sponsors. “We’ll see how well that works for you.”

His face darkens. With a humorless chuckle, he says, “I guess we will.”

***

Six hours later, Mikasa has changed her mind about feeling pretty. It’s not worth it, and never will be, and if she has to go through the vicious scrub-down, hair removal, and skin treatments that she just did ever again, it will be too soon.

She feels a bit like a plucked bird, and the way that she has been left—alone in a dressing room, waiting for her stylist, naked under the thin robe she’d been given —doesn’t help that feeling. Her scarf was taken away for review at the train station and she’s terrified that she’ll never get it back, so she doesn’t even have that comfort to lean into. 

She doesn’t have to wait too long, at least. After several minutes, the door bursts open and a crazed looking woman pops into the room with a nearly sung, “Hello!”

She drops a bag overflowing with fabrics, papers, and what Mikasa assumes is makeup and grabs her hand to shake. “I’m so sorry about being late! I was so determined to get this perfect and then I lost track of time! I’m Hanji Zoe, you can call me Hanji. It’s so lovely to meet you, Miss Ackerman!”

Mikasa shakes back tentatively. “No worries,” she murmurs. “Nice to meet you, too. And you can call me Mikasa.”

Hanji grins. “Great! Oh, I’m so excited. I think you’ll really like this costume.”

Mikasa nods. Despite herself, she doesn’t instantly dislike Hanji. She seems sincere, just like the prep team that had gotten her ready, but she’s much more human-looking than they were. This woman has long-ish brown hair half-hazardly pulled into a high ponytail, her skin is a normal human color and untattooed from what she can see, and she’s wearing glasses. It’s the first person from Mitras that Mikasa has ever seen with any sort of physical imperfection at all. 

Hanji seems to notice her staring and laughs. “I know, right? Oh, it’s fine, trust me, I’m used to it.”

“Oh.” Mikasa tugs at the sleeve of her robe. “I--thought Oulo said you were new, this year? I’m sorry, I don’t recognize . . .”

Hanji waves her off. “No, no, I am. New to the design scene, at least! Come, come, you must be starving, and we have some things to discuss before we get to the tailoring and the makeup.” She grabs her bag and takes Mikasa by the elbow, guiding her through a door off the side and into a sort of office. There are two leather couches facing each other with a table in between them, and one wall is a solid glass plane that looks over the city. 

The sun is just barely beginning to set; they probably have four hours until the opening ceremony. At sunset proper, she, Eren, and the other twenty-two tributes will be carted through the city in a twelve-minute parade, dressed in costumes that represent their home district. Unlike Orvud, which mines precious gems, or Yalkel, which provides seafood and other oceanic goods, there’s little room left over for creativity in Shiganshina’s coal mines. Mikasa has spent her life watching their tributes dressed in various stupid-looking adaptations of what is meant to be a coal miners’s uniform. 

Mikasa sits on the couch opposite to Hanji, feeling nervous. The woman presses a button on the table and it splits, a second tabletop rising from within, loaded with food. At the press of a button. 

Mikasa had known, even as a little girl, how much better off they were in the Village than the rest of the district. And then when they lost everything, she had thought back to those days as the height of luxury. But to live in a world where food literally appeared _at the press of a button . . ._ that’s unfathomable even to her. 

Hanji notices her staring and says, excitement absent from her voice for the first time, “I can’t imagine what we must look like to you.”

Mikasa looks up and the serious expression melts off Hanji’s face. “Well. Eat up, honey, and we’re going to talk fashion.”

She pulls out a massive roll of paper, covered in incomprehensible charcoal sketches and notes, out of her bag and spreads it on the table. All Mikasa can decipher from it is that it looks like she will in fact be wearing clothes, which is really all she could ask for. 

“So,” Hanji says, eyes gleaming manically. “How do you feel about fire?”

***

“This is a bad idea,” Mikasa hisses.

Eren’s face is grim as he nods. “I think I could manage to rip your cape off, if you promise to do the same for me.”

She agrees instantly. “We’re going to look so stupid if we have to throw ourselves out of the carriage to stop, drop, and roll.”

He sniggers. “Will it make us more appealing, do you think? If we manage to survive the burns, that just proves we’ve got survival instincts, right?”

“We can hope.” She looks around at the other tributes. 

They’re at the bottom of the Remake Center, waiting around for the parade to begin with Hanji, and Eren’s stylist Eld. Shiganshina, as the smallest, poorest, and furthest removed from the capital, will go last as always. Their team had made it down relatively early. Their costumes had been mostly done already, just tailoring and makeup to go. Mikasa’s hair had even, blessedly, been left alone. Hanji had pinned her messy bangs out of her face, but the rest had merely been brushed and left down. Right now, they don’t look like anything special, just two kids in black unitards and boots, a nearly invisible cape of sheer strips of varying lengths. They have stark black headpieces that almost look like crowns and minimal makeup. She’s sure that right now, the others think they look like generously stylized pieces of coal. 

Ha ha. If only. But no. Hanji is going to set them on fire. 

“Synthetic fire,” she had assured Mikasa. “Completely harmless, you won’t feel a thing! I finally perfected it last week.”

It hadn’t been that reassuring. 

She understands the reasoning behind it. You mine coal to burn it. You’re dressed up for the opening ceremony to catch people’s attention. Being set on fire is probably the best way to do it. Mikasa is positive that they will get plenty of attention from this, she just isn’t sure that most of it won’t be from doctors who have to slap new skin on them before the Games start. 

Mikasa’s heart is fluttering in her chest. She’s mildly terrified of everything right now--burning to death, the other tributes, the way she looks, the way that she will never see her family again--and she lacks even the comfortable warmth against her neck. Eren is here, but hell if she knows what she’s supposed to do with the boy who gave her the scarf. 

_Thank him,_ the voice in her head tells her. But then music begins, loud enough that she feels it in her teeth. The tributes from Orvud, glittering and glamorous in their diamond-studded costumes, are pulled into the street by their horses. 

“Ah!” Hanji claps. “Alright, kids, up up! Let’s do this!”

Eren and Mikasa exchange a look and climb into their own carriage, the coal-black horses neighing. Hanji and Eld carefully position their bodies and their capes, then step back. “Alright!” Hanji says, and pulls, from that giant bag of hers, a small torch. With a flick of a switch, it ignites; before she or Eren can protest, she lights Mikasa on fire.

She gasps and flinches away, but no pain comes. Beside her, Eren has about the same reaction. Mikasa doesn’t even feel any heat. Just the faintest tickling sensation. 

“Oh thank God,” Hanji sighs. “It works!”

Mikasa thinks that Hanji must be the craziest person in Mitras. 

Eld reaches over her head and turns on her and Eren’s headdresses. “You’ll be wonderful,” he tells them, shouting to be heard over the music. “Keep your chins up and smile.”

“Everyone is going to love you!” Hanji cheers. Their horses begin pulling the chariot with a jolt, and they both stumble. Mikasa grabs Eren’s wrist for support, and Hanji adds, “Oh, yes, that’s perfect!” She jogs alongside the trotting horses. Eren adjusts so that they’re properly holding hands and Hanji grins and throws her thumbs up.

And then they are pulled out into the city. 

Under the music, she can hear several million people gasp in shock, and then their cheers explode from every direction. The crowd lines either side of the street, ten rows deep on either side. Giant screens are positioned all over, and Mikasa can see her and Eren’s faces on every single one of them. 

_Smile,_ she remembers. 

She smiles as brightly as she can and waves to the crowd with her free hand. The crowd goes wild, throwing flowers and blowing kisses. Beside her, Eren is a lifeline. She’s certain she would fall out without him to hold onto. 

She looks around. The fantastical buildings that scrape the sky as far as the eye can see, the colors that dusk has turned the sky, the faces in the crowd. She sees herself on screen. She looks--unreal. Still herself, but some version of herself from a fairy tale. She is burning, leaving a trail of fire, wearing a crown of flames. She looks beautiful.

Suddenly, hope kicks to life in her heart. Why should she write herself off? After this, she’s guaranteed to have sponsors. If she can get her hands on a bow, why wouldn’t she be able to go home? Levi had! Why couldn’t she?

Invigorated, Mikasa blows kisses into the crowd. Thousands of hands reach up to catch them. She smiles and waves until her arm hurts, the fingers of her other hand locked so tightly around Eren’s that she half-worries she won’t be able to pry them off.

Eventually, as the sun dips below the horizon completely and the twilight begins to darken, the tribute parade begins to wrap up. The chariots circle around the perimeter of the Tribute Center, where President Fritz gives a brief welcoming speech. The gigantic screens around him cut to each of the tributes’ faces, but Mikasa sees that they remain on her and Eren the longest. They look even more dazzling the darker that it gets. When the king’s speech wraps up, they peel off inside the building.

They are the last ones inside, and when the massive doors slide shut, the noise of the streets cuts off abruptly. 

“Holy shit,” Eren says, exhaling heavily.

Mikasa agrees. She feels half out of breath herself. 

“You were spectacular!” Hanji screams, appearing out of nowhere. She whips the crowns off their heads and throws some sort of dust on them that extinguishes the fake (?) fire. Eld enters from the side of the room and helps them remove their capes. 

At that moment, Mikasa realizes she and Eren are still clutching each other’s hands. She pulls away and tries to massage feeling back into her palm. 

“That was _incredible,”_ Hanji continues, throwing more powder on their capes. “Congratulations, kids, I’m so proud of you. You were _perfect._ Nobody will be able to stop talking about you.”

“Thank you,” Mikasa says. She means that sincerely. Aflame in that chariot, she’d felt such a bright hope for the first time since . . . God. Since her eyes had slid off of Eren Jaeger and onto that bellflower. 

“We did make a good impression, didn’t we?” Eren seems pleased. He hops out of the chariot and turns around to offer her a hand. Bemused, she takes it and lets him help her down. He’s taller than her by just a few inches, but they’re close enough that she has to tip her head back a bit. “Thank you for hanging onto me, by the way,” he says. “I would have fallen out without you there.”

She takes a step back. “Oh? I didn’t notice.”

“I’m sure no one did. They were all too busy staring at you, girl on fire.”

Mikasa ducks her head, face heating as an unfamiliar warmth rushes through her. As soon as it does, though, uncertainty chases it right out. What is Eren doing, being so friendly with her? Giving her the bread all those years ago, always rushing to his friend Armin’s defense even when he knew he would get beaten up himself--she knows that he’s a kind person, a boy driven strongly by his own morals. But he’s definitely not _nice._ He’s loud, brash, and kind of obnoxious--certainly not the type to playfully complement his competition.

A chilling thought strikes her. Eren knows that she’s serious competition, for him specifically since they’re competing for sponsors. And he knows that he means something to her--maybe not exactly how much, but he’s not stupid and she’s been wearing his scarf for seven years. What if he’s doing this--being sweet to her here, fetching her on the train, even bidding her goodnight last night--to lure her in? Make her easy prey?

The cold settles into her and the idea does. It makes too much sense. Why else would Eren Jaeger, of all people--Eren Jaeger who hadn’t responded when she called out to him that day at school, who always looked away when she looked back at him, who had never so much as acknowledged her--suddenly be nice to her?

Well.

Her heart hard as stone, Mikasa smiles up at him, puts her hand on his shoulder, and kisses him on the cheek.

_Two can play at that game._

***

Shiganshina’s suite in the Tribute Center, marked with blue-and-white wings, is on the very top floor, high enough that it’s level with much of the skyline. The luxury of Mitras truly knows no bounds. Her room in the Tribute Center is bigger than her house in the Seam. The shower is bigger than the single bedroom, and has about a thousand buttons to press, offering limitless combinations of water pressure, temperatures, soaps, oils, steams, and massaging sponges. When she finally figures out how to turn it off, heaters pop out of the walls and blow her dry in seconds. Instead of brushing through her hair, she only has to place her fingers on a silver ball that untangles and dries it all instantly with electricity, somehow. The closet has so many outfits that she has to use a computer screen to sort through them, and everything is in her size already.

By the time Oulo collects her for their late supper, Mikasa is wearing a loose dark blue dress that may or may not be a nightgown and the softest pair of socks she’s ever worn. She shrugs, deciding it’s good enough, and joins the rest of the Shiganshina team on the balcony. She’s starving.

She feels a little underdressed when the rest of them are in semi-formal attire (or what she assumes goes for semi-formal in Mitras), but quickly forgets about that and focuses on the food. Dinner is served in courses--a dainty little soup full of unfamiliar greens, cheesy bread, noodles with fried eggplant, steaks seasoned with spices she only half-remembers. Young, silent servers in white bring and take away their dishes and fill their drinks. Every bite she takes is better than the last one. Mikasa hasn’t eaten food that she didn’t hunt down herself one way or another in years. She wonders how hard the chefs here in Mitras worked on this.

The adults--Hanji, Eld, Oulo, and a surprisingly sober Hannes--make small talk while she and Eren silently stuff their faces. Mostly they talk about how wonderful their costumes were, how very impressed people were. Oulo happily tells the table that he’s been talking up the tributes to apparently everyone in the city, and how receptive they all have been. 

“A doctor’s son and a Victor’s sister,” he chirps. “Not bad odds, eh?”

“Speaking of,” Hannes says, pushing himself away from the table a bit. “Now that you’ve survived the first day--”

“With flying colors!” Oulo adds.

“--we can start talking actual Games strategy. Jaeger. You’re the good doctor’s boy. Have you managed to pick up anything from him?”

Eren swallows a huge mouthful of his steak. “I tag along with him for most everything, these days. Since Zeke decided to take up goat-farming, I was supposed to be the next Doctor Jaeger.” He stabs another bite of steak. “I can treat most wounds and a fair amount of illness if I have the right shit to do it with.”

Hannes nods. “That’s excellent. And you said you’re on the wrestling team?”

“He’s the captain,” Mikasa says, since Eren had just taken another bite, clearly not expecting to have to answer another question. “He won the school tournament last year.”

“That’s right,” Hannes says. “Both extremely valuable skills. That doctor schtick makes you one-of-a-kind in the arena, you know. Marketable for an ally.” He nods. “Okay. And Mikasa--I buy your kills. You’re not bad with that bow of yours.”

“She’s better than _not bad,”_ Eren says. Mikasa blinks at him. He shrugs. “My mom buys your squirrels. You hit them straight in the eye every time.”

“I . . . do my best.” She’s surprised that he even knows she trades with them; he never seems to be home when she does. “I’m not as good a shot as Levi was.”

“That still makes you leagues ahead of everyone else in the arena,” Eren argues. 

“He’s right,” Hannes says. “Being able to use a weapon, especially a ranged one, is an invaluable skill. Then we get into the fact that you’re half-Oriental. That’ll draw in some sponsors for sure. You’re foreign enough to be exotic but familiar enough to be attractive. And that familiar half--” He whistles lowly. “Levi Ackerman’s sister.”

“Half-sister,” she mutters, uncomfortable with the discussion of her looks. 

He flips his hand. “Whatever. Levi was one of the most popular Victors of all time. He had the highest kill-count in history, and the fact that he didn’t give a single flying fuck about anything other than to complain about how unsanitary all the blood made him incredibly popular.” He looked her up and down. “Now, the way you volunteered for your niece--no stone-cold killer would do that. People are already saying you’re the anti-Ackerman.”

Eren snorts. 

Hannes points a fork at him. “I agree. Mikasa, you’re essentially a mini-Levi. Well. Big Levi, actually. Whatever. But that doesn’t matter. In terms of marketing, he was stuck with the brand of a ruthless, emotionless, highly-efficient killer. You, now, are his pretty, _fiery_ baby sister. They see you taking your niece’s place and smiling and waving and assume that you’re a sweetheart. Now they just want to see how well you can kill.” He takes a sip of his wine. “I recommend you let them know exactly how well. No matter what, there’s already a target on your head. Your brother got away with letting people think he was weak because he was tiny and from Shiganshina. No one expected anything from him. You will not get away with the same thing.”

She supposes not. She’s heard commentators speculating that Levi might have trained her, and it’s not like they’re wrong. Just . . . not exactly in the way that they were thinking. She’s never touched a sword in her life. Nobody would see the bow coming. 

Or, well. Hopefully they wouldn’t see the _arrows._

“I shouldn’t let the other tributes know how though, right?” she asks. 

He nods. “Atta girl, junior. Let them know you are dangerous, but hide why.” He waves his fork between them. “In front of the others, I want you two to focus on learning survival skills. Try learning from each other. Young doctor, you teach the princess here how to sew a bitch up. You teach him to set a snare. Memorize edible plants. How to find water. Climbing. Most tributes die of natural causes, and the pair of you have far too much potential to go from _dehydration.”_

Eren lifts his head from his plate again to look at Hannes incredulously. “Wait. You’re saying you want us to . . . what, hang out together? In the training?”

“Bingo.”

Mikasa raises her eyebrows. Is this her doing, for holding his hand during the parade? That had been accidental. “Do you want us to team up in the arena?” she asks blankly. 

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” He takes another sip of wine. “For now, just do as I say. Stick to each other in front of the others. As far as they know, you two are best fucking friends. Got it?”

She shrugs. Eren narrows his eyes and nods once. 

“Glad we’ve got that taken care of. And look, just in time for dessert!”

Mikasa looks over her shoulder just in time for a huge, gorgeous cake to pass over her and be set down. She watches as the server flicks a little gadget that produces flame and sets the cake on fire. Her eyes go wide--surely even here they don’t _literally burn_ food for the hell of it?--but the flames only burn for a moment before subsiding. “Oh,” she says, leaning closer. “What was that? Is it--wait, I know you--”

Even as the words leave her mouth, she regrets saying them. But she couldn’t help it--the sheer shock of finding a familiar face here of all places. She only ever saw her once, but Mikasa couldn’t forget this girl’s face. Or her hair, which was so close to Petra’s that for a split second, years ago, she had thought her sister-in-law had followed them into the woods.

The girl, who really does bear a superficial to Petra with her reddish hair and hazel eyes, shakes her head _no_ and scurries away. She flees the room entirely, leaving Mikasa behind with ashes in her mouth. When she turns back to the table, everyone is staring at her. “What?” she snaps.

“That’s preposterous,” Oulo says. “You couldn’t possibly know an Avox.”

She frowns. “A what?”

“A criminal,” Hanji explains. “Probably a traitor. Their tongues have been cut out, and they can only be servants.”

“And you’re a tribute, dear, you’re not to speak to one unless it’s to give an order,” says Oulo. He sniffs. “Of course you don’t know her.”

Fear adds itself to the horrible feeling in her stomach, like she’s gotten in trouble at school. “No, I guess not . . .”

Eren thumps the table. “I’ve got it! Ruth Kline!” He jerks his thumb over the table. “I’d been thinking she looked familiar too. She looks _just_ like Ruth Kline, the shoemaker’s daughter, doesn’t she?”

Mikasa genuinely doesn’t remember a Ruth Kline, but she once again uses Eren as a lifeline. “Yes, that must be it. The hair . . .”

“And her nose, too.” He reaches out and cuts himself a huge piece of cake, and that seems to pop the bubble of tension.

“Well then. If that’s it.” Hannes makes a shooing motion. “Then you two can scurry off to bed now. The grown-ups have some things to discuss.”

Mikasa rolls her eyes but stands nonetheless. Eren takes a second piece of cake and fork with him. They walk back to their rooms, but when they reach her door, Eren leans his shoulder against it and says, “Ruth Kline, huh?”

Her shoulders stiffen. 

“Have you seen the roof yet?” he asks, green eyes wide and guileless. “Great view. The wind is kinda loud, but since we were kicked out . . .” He lifts the plate with two slices of cake. “Maybe it’s just my mother’s influence, but I don’t think we’re allowed to eat in our bedrooms.”

After a moment of internal debate, she says, “Okay.” Seeing the girl again had shaken her, and it’s not like Eren can use the story against her. Even if he is trying to butter her up, now that she’s guarding her heart against him it won’t work. 

He brightens. “Come on.”

He leads her to a tucked-away door and up an unadorned staircase. “I think it’s meant for the servants to come and go,” he says. “But Eld took me up earlier, so it’s not like we’re breaking any rules.”

“This from the boy who was afraid to eat in his bedroom?” she murmurs. 

Eren rolls his eyes, twisting the handle with his free hand and pushing the door open with his back to let her step through. She figures that he’s unlikely to stab her in the back with a fork their first night here and walks onto the roof. 

“Wow,” she breathes. The roof is unexpectedly beautiful. She had believed that the view would be incredible, but Eren had completely neglected to mention the _garden._ She walks toward the neat rows of trees and patches of flowers as if pulled. It’s partially practical, she’s surprised to see. There are patches of herbs and the trees bear fruit she doesn’t recognize. Ever in pursuit of aesthetics, though, the Mitras people had decked it out with delicate windchimes and paper lanterns. She finds herself hypnotized by a chime that’s shaped like a mockingjay. Somehow, the intricate metalwork spins in the wind to give the illusion that the little crested bird is flapping its wings. 

The clatter of the plate draws her attention to the edge where Eren is facing her, his elbows against the railing that he had set the plate down on. Her jerks his head, summoning her, and Mikasa goes. The lights city before and below them take her breath away. She remembers Levi telling her you couldn’t see the stars at night, and that’s true. But finds that she can’t even miss them: it’s like they’ve fallen to earth and formed new constellations. 

“You’re right,” she says. “It is a great view.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. Something in his voice is harder than just moments ago, but she can’t place it. When she looks at him, she shakes his head once and pushes the plate towards her. “Here.”

She blinks. 

He nudges it forward again. “Did you not want a piece? Cause I’m sure I can eat two . . .”

“No,” she says. “I . . . there’s only one fork?”

“Oh.” He frowns down at the plate like it's disappointed him. “Well, you can have it.” Then he picks up one of the cake slices with his bare hands and bites into it like a sandwich. 

Despite herself, Mikasa presses her lips together to suppress a laugh. She picks up the fork and cuts off a bite. It’s excellent. 

“So,” he asks, frosting on his lips. “Ruth Kline.”

She pushes the cake. “Levi and I were out in the forest one day,” she says. “I was eight. He’d been teaching me to set snares, but we were taking a break to eat lunch. Suddenly, the whole forest went quiet, except for just one bird. And then these two teenagers crashed out of the brush right in front of us. It was the same girl. She looked so much like Petra that I thought it was her, for a second.” She remembers how terrified they had looked, the way that Levi had drawn tense like a strung bow and shoved her behind him. “Then a hovercraft appeared out of thin air and caught them.” She swallows, wishing she had the scarf to pull over her mouth. “The boy was shot through with some harpoon thing, but they got the girl with a net. They pulled both of them up, and then they were gone. The whole thing took maybe five seconds. And then the birds started singing again.”

He blows out a breath. “Did she see you?”

Mikasa nods. Her bangs blow out from where they were tucked behind her ears. “I think so. She screamed something. She . . . might have been asking for help.” Her skin breaks out in goosebumps.

“It was the first time I’d ever . . .” She trails off, unsure of how exactly to finish. “I knew how hard things were in Shiganshina. And I knew what the Hunger Games were. But Petra and Levi never let me watch them. The most I ever saw was the recaps played at school. I was kept very, very sheltered when I was small. So I guess that was the first time I saw violence like that. It was hard to forget.”

Eren nods. “I remember the first time I saw someone die. It sticks with you.”

“Yeah.” There’s not much else to say. They’ll both be seeing plenty of death, soon. 

They finish their cake, the sounds of the wind, windchimes, and the city below taking the place of conversation. The wind blows hard enough that she shivers in the dress that she’s now pretty sure is a nightgown. She wishes she was wearing pants. Shoes. She wishes she had her scarf. She wishes she were back in Shiganshina. 

After a few minutes, they go back downstairs. Eren takes the plate and fork back when he bids her goodnight at her door. She brushes her teeth and crawls into bed, which is impossibly even softer than the one on the train. Tonight, though, it takes her a long time to fall asleep. Grief hangs heavy in her heart. For the boy who they speared, for the Avox girl’s voice and freedom, for Levi and his strong arms around her, keeping her safe. For her own life. 

She wonders if that girl even recognized her. She had been a child, and half-hidden by Levi. But if she had recognized Levi—and surely she had, as famous as he was—then she would be able to put together who the dark-haired little girl with him was. 

Mikasa thinks about Eren Jaeger and two loaves of bread tied up in a new red scarf, and knows that she was not forgotten.

You don’t forget your last chance at hope. Even if they did you no good in the end. 

Even if they might be trying to kill you.


	3. i wish it mattered

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from "That Thing I Love With" by Suzanne Collins.

Mikasa comes to in a cold sweat, muttering for Levi to _not get on the hovercraft, it’s going to crash, don’t go don’t leave us please don’t—_

She curls onto her side, unsure how to feel about the familiar old nightmare. The sun is mostly risen, and she watches it climb into the sky thinking of home. Petra, Izzy, and Ben must be awake now. Izzy is probably milking Bean. Her hair is probably in pigtails, the ribbons tied in Petra’s neat bows. Baby Benny will be underfoot, bothering the cat. Petra will herd them off to school before she begins her workday. What did they have for breakfast? Have they finished off the strawberries? They don’t keep for very long in this weather. She hopes they’ve eaten them all. She hopes that those weren’t the last strawberries they will ever have. 

Thinking about breakfast wakes her own appetite, so she showers, dresses in an outfit that was laid at the foot of her bed, and heads back to the dining room. Another buffett is waiting for her and she heaps food onto her plate. Really, the most productive thing she can do in this city is to gain a few pounds. She moves to the balcony and eats in silence, watching the city stir to life.

She knows basically what her family back home is doing, so her thoughts turn to Levi. Had he stayed on this floor when he was a tribute? He must have. Even if the Tribute Center had been updated in the nineteen years since he’d won, he’d come back here every summer as a mentor. How many times had her brother sat in this exact spot, eating breakfast and thinking of home? What would he be doing if he were here with her?

He probably would find some way to slip arsenic into the food of all the other tributes. Or he’d threaten the Gamemakers into blowing them all up before they had the chance to step off their plates. If Levi were with her now, she would have no doubts that she was coming home alive.

Would she even be here at all? If Levi were alive, Mikasa never would have taken out the tesserae. Would the lack of those ballots have led to Oulo’s hand drawing a different name? 

A horrible thought strikes her. What if . . . _it wouldn’t have?_ What if the reaping had been rigged? Victors’ children had been reaped before, often enough for it to be suspicious. Was it _really_ just pure bad luck that the only slip bearing Isabelle Ackerman had been drawn? Or . . . had all of them . . .

Her train of thought deteriorates from there, just a horrible loop of _what if_ and _even if I win, will they be safe?_ Surely they won’t dare call Izzy’s name again. Even the Mitras people aren’t stupid enough that someone could be called at the reaping twice. But Ben—enough years will have gone by by the time he’s old enough for the reaping that maybe people will have forgotten. But if they have, then will he be safe? But—if Mikasa wins, then will that reignite interest in the Ackerman family? If she _loses,_ will that kill it? 

But if she loses, who will put food on the table? Petra has decent work as a seamstress and washerwoman, and Bean provides them with cheese and milk to trade, but . . . Mikasa killed and cooked most of their food herself. She traded for much of the rest of it. Benny had been such a sickly baby. He is still frail. He isn’t built to starve. What if he gets sick like he used to? How will Petra afford Doctor Jaeger without the wild herbs Mikasa trades? 

Eventually, Hannes finds her and shoos her to the elevator. “You’ll be late! We thought you were just having a lie-in, junior.”

“Looks like she’s got hiding down,” Eren mutters. They’re wearing almost the exact same outfit.

Hannes pushes them inside. “Remember what I said! _Best friends.”_ He pushes a button and the door snaps shut. 

The elevator is fast, but not fast enough that it doesn’t have time to get awkward. The door opens after a moment, depositing them into the underground training room where they will spend the next few days trying to get a decent score. They’re the last pair there, and, to her confusion and annoyance, the only pair dressed alike. 

“We’re twins,” she says. 

He glances down at her. “It’s not like it’s the first time we’ve worn the same clothes.” 

The first time he acknowledges the scarf in _seven years_ and it’s to snark at her. At that moment, she remembers that Eren Jaeger was so annoying as a child that he’d gotten beaten up at least once a week. 

They join the loose circle of other kids all side-eying each other tensely. Mikasa takes note of the competition again. The boy from Trost is built like a brick shithouse; the short blonde girl from Orvud already looks like she wants to kill her; the girl from Yalkel with curly hair and a dangerous smirk. One boy has what is legitimately the stupidest haircut she has ever seen, including Mitras natives. The little twelve-year-old from Trost stands on her tiptoes to appear taller. Mikasa wonders if she’s doing it on purpose. 

The man in charge of their training, Keith Shadis, yells at them for a bit about how all but one of them is going to be dead in a month. He details the ways they’re likely to go: after the initial bloodbath, mostly natural causes like dehydration or hypothermia. He stresses the importance of survival skills, especially for “a bunch of pussy-footed crybabies like the likes of you all.”

After that, they’re set loose to make what they will of the various training stations. Eren knocks her shoulder and nods to the tree climbing station. Mikasa learned to climb trees shortly after she learned to run, but she shrugs and agrees. 

They spend the next three days rotating between stations. As Hannes ordered, they stick to each other and don’t show their strengths. The combat strengths, at least--Mikasa ends up half-leading a snare-setting lesson, and Eren gets in a heated debate with the instructor at the edible plants station over the medicinal properties of yarrow. He also, unexpectedly, demonstrates a talent for camouflage. 

“I help my dad with this plant book he’s making,” he explains when she asks. “He was a worse artist at forty-whatever than I was at nine, so I was conscripted.” He shrugs. “Armin and I used to draw a lot, too.”

“It paid off,” she tells him. He can smash nearly anything into a disguise: berries, mud, tree bark. 

He snorts. “Don’t know how much use it’ll be when Bertolt snaps me over his knee.”

Without really trying to, they’ve learned some of the other tributes’ names. Annie and Bertolt, the career tributes from Orvud; Jana and Floch from Ermich; Sandra and Marcel from Stohess; Mina and Tom from Krolva. The huge boy from Trost is named Reiner, and he’s about the friendliest person Mikasa has ever met. He joins her at the snare-setting lesson and cracks jokes at the expense of his own thick, clumsy fingers to keep the atmosphere light. She thinks how easily those thick fingers would be able to crush her throat. And the little girl from Trost, who has taken to following her and Eren around, who Reiner bench-pressed while laughing, who has dull coppery hair and hazel eyes like Isabelle, is named Louise. 

In the buffett line for lunch on the third day, Eren flips a hand through her hair. “Your hair is pretty long,” he says.

“I guess,” she agrees, picking up a grilled cheese sandwich. It has an extra slice of bread in the middle, and about six different types of cheese. She gets two. 

“Do you ever think about cutting it? Or braiding it back? What if someone grabs you by it in the arena?”

She frowns. “Well, I don’t know how to braid—”

“Seriously?” He grins. “Did we finally find something that the perfect Mikasa Ackerman can’t do? 

“Very funny.”

“I can teach you, if you want,” he offers. 

“I know _how_ to braid,” she says. “I just can’t do it to my own hair.”

“Just braid it over one shoulder so you don’t have to twist your arms around.”

They sit down at the long table. Most of the tributes eat alone, but she and Eren (and Reiner) had been invited to sit with the career tributes on the first day. It’s bullshit, them sitting together like the popular kids at school, like they won’t be killing each other in a few days. The Careers will probably form an alliance to hunt down the weaker kids, but it can only be temporary, and she and Eren have no intention of joining. Mikasa doesn’t even want to know these people’s names, let alone be friendly with them. Eren manages to mask his hatred for them at lunch but will rage about them at dinner. But it would be stupid to insult them and Hannes had told her to play nice, so here she is.

“I’ll be fine,” she says. 

Eren rolls his eyes. “Seriously, it’ll help to have your hair out of your face. Let me.”

Mikasa senses that he’s not going to let this go and sighs. “Fine. Do your worst.”

Eren seems to—light up. He scoops all her hair up and pulls it over her shoulder. Bertolt and Annie join them at the table, giving them odd looks. Unbothered, Eren divides her hair into three sections and begins braiding. Annie raises her eyebrows at Mikasa; she shrugs back. The interaction makes her think of Historia, sending a pang through her chest. Eren actually braids it very well, and when he finishes he produces a piece of string (presumably from the knot-tying station) and ties it off. He slips it back over her shoulder and says, “There. It suits you.” 

Mikasa really doesn’t know how to feel about that interaction, but he was right. Her hair bothers her less like this. 

After lunch, the Gamemakers begin calling them into a private room for their private training session. They spent the past two and a half days watching from a balcony, and now they will evaluate them one by one to give them a score that will be announced later that night. On a scale of one to twelve, twelve meaning, essentially, they expect the next Levi Ackerman; one meaning you really ought to just blow yourself up before the countdown finishes and save someone else the trouble of killing you.

One by one, the training room empties. She and Eren go back over fire-starting and edible plants from other regions. When more than half of the others have filed out, they go over to the knife-fighting station. She was right: Eren’s wrestling skill is a huge asset. He’s able to pin their instructor and get a fake knife into what would have been his heart. 

“Excellent aim,” the instructor says, rubbing what will surely become a nasty bruise. 

Eren shrugs. “Doctor’s son. Gotta know the anatomy.”

Mikasa doesn’t turn out to be an exceptional knife-fighter, but she takes to throwing them fairly well. She’s not half as accurate as she is with a bow, but she can sink a knife into the target from thirty feet nine times out of ten. Not bad, considering she started learning about an hour ago. She gathers that she could probably kill someone from a tree, but if Eren jumps her, she won’t have too much of a chance. 

The idea of Eren Jaeger literally jumping her with a knife and stabbing her to death is unsettling and faintly ridiculous. She remembers the way he’d charge into fights when they were younger. He was all rage and no sense. He’s gotten smarter since then, and a lot bigger, but not very much calmer. Anyone will hear his battle cries from a hundred yards away. 

Eventually, Eren is called. He stands and gives her a half-hearted grin that tugs at her heart. “Good luck,” she says. 

“And to you.” He flicks her braid, which had fallen back over her shoulder. “Shoot straight.”

And then she’s alone. She quizzes herself on edible plants, half her thoughts focused on the bow across the room. She’s avoided that station all week, but it’s her lifeline. If she can demonstrate skill, they’ll make sure a bow ends up in the Cornucopia. If she can get her hands on the bow, she’s got a fighting chance. 

About fifteen minutes pass before she’s called. Mikasa wipes her palms on her thighs and walks into the next room. It’s just as big, with all the same stations. Another elevator is at the far end, which will take her back to her suite. The Gamemakers sit on a balcony, talking loudly amongst themselves. Mikasa realizes with sudden dread that they’re mostly drunk. They’ve been doing this for nearly six hours, and the tributes generally get less exciting as they go. By and large, they’ve stopped paying attention and are ready to go home. Only one even registers her coming in, but he shakes the shoulders of his friends and points down at her. That quiets them a bit. One man continues to sing loudly and off-key about something. 

Uncomfortable with the eyes on her, Mikasa walks across the room, slings the quiver over her shoulder, and picks up the silver bow. The weight of it is unfamiliar in her hands, and it’s bigger than the one Levi had made for himself. She moves her hands around, trying to find the most natural way to rest her hands. After she does, she pulls one of the arrows from the quiver and notches it. Again, the arrows are heavier than she’s used to, made of metal instead of wood. She tests the taut new string and winces.

Slowly, carefully, Mikasa steadies her breath, aims at the target fifty feet away, shoots—

And misses.

Not all that badly. The arrow sinks into the rubber two inches away from the human-shaped target’s shoulder. It’s not what she was hoping for, but it’s not a bad shot by any means. 

But the Gamemakers don’t see it that way. She can hear their scoffs and snickers and her face burns with shame. Stupid, she scolds herself. Why didn’t she practice at all beforehand? Once she and Eren were alone she could have tried out the bow. Eren knew what she could do.

She grits her teeth and shakes her head. She switches targets from the outline of a man to a simple bullseye and takes a few practice shots. After she hits the bullseye three times in a row, growing used to the unfamiliar power in this bow, she goes back to the human target. 

Mikasa picks another and takes aim once more, adjusting for the unfamiliar power, releases, and—

Hits the dummy right in the eye. She moves back twenty feet and then shoots it through the other eye. Another twenty feet she pierces the heart. For good measure, she shoots the string that connects the dummy head to the beam holding it up and it collapses to the ground, arrows sticking out of its face and chest.

She blows her bangs, pleased. But when she looks to the Gamemakers, not one of them is looking at her. They completely missed her show. Instead, they’re focused on a roast pig that a team of Avoxes just rolled in. 

It’s a huge pig, roasted in one piece on a spit, surrounded with vegetables and herbs, an apple stuck in its open mouth. They fawn over it with delight, hooting and hollering.

Mikasa narrows her eyes, cold anger taking root in her chest. Her life is on the line here, and can’t even be bothered to watch? The value that they will place on her life is less to them than a _dead pig?_

Setting her jaw, she notches another arrow, aims carefully, and lets it fly.

The arrow shoots straight through the apple in the pig’s mouth and pins it to the wall. The Gamemakers whirl around. They stare at her with wide eyes, shocked into silence. Mikasa sheds the quiver and bows at the waist stiffly. “Thank you,” she says, “for your consideration.”

She drops the bow and walks out.

***

It takes her until the elevator doors close to realize that that was a horrible idea. It hadn’t been an idea at all, really, she’d just been _mad._ She hadn’t been _thinking._

It takes her until the elevator doors open again to feel tears well up in her eyes.

Team Shiganshina greets her when she steps out, and they notice immediately that she’s upset. Eren shoots to his feet, looking for all the world like he wants to pick a fight, but Mikasa ignores them all and runs to her room. She flops on her bed and lets the tears come, shaking with leftover anger and fresh terror.

Oh, _now_ she’s gone and done it! She ruined everything! All Hanji’s hard work, everything Levi ever taught her, even Eren’s effort all those years ago. How could she possibly be so stupid as to _fire at the Gamemakers?_ They must be furious! Any minute, she expects that her door will be kicked in and she’ll be dragged away for execution, or a beating, or something. Surely, attempted murder is a crime here, too.

That thought sets off a new round of sobs. She hadn’t been _aiming for any of them!_ But how are they to know that when she just shot at them and walked away? She could have—laughed it off, or explained, but her own poor attitude got in the way.

As time passes and no one comes for her, she calms down. They can’t punish her now, right? Not two days before the Games. And they wouldn’t hurt her family either, would they? It wouldn’t make sense to hurt them when she wouldn’t know about it and would die anyway. The worst they can really do is give her a low score to scare off any sponsors and then make her life hell in the arena, but she brought that on herself. _It’s not like I was going to win anyway,_ she thinks miserably. 

For the first time, she allows the thought to make her sad. Crying over her own imminent death is cathartic. 

Oh, well. Maybe Eren will win, she comforts herself. Maybe they’ll give him a few extra points to bribe Shiganshina sponsors to the other side. He’s strong and tall and handsome, and he definitely has the guts to kill.

After a long while, Hannes knocks on her door. “Junior?” he calls. “It’s time for dinner.”

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

She swaps her training outfit for a gray dress and a thick sweater and washes her face. It’s still obvious that she’s been crying, but they all knew that anyway, so what does matter?

Dinner is awkward. The adults make small talk for about ten minutes until Hannes finally sighs. “Okay,” he says. “Enough moping, you two. How bad was it?”

Eren, who has been chewing with visible and audible anger this whole time, throws his fork down. “It was a complete joke,” he growls. “They were drunk, not paying _any_ attention. I couldn’t wrestle without anyone to partner with and waving around a knife is only so intimidating. I threw some weights around and did that stupid identifiying plants test after a while, and then they just told me to go.”

Hannes clicks his tongue. “And you, junior?”

Mikasa pushes her spoon through the soup and mumbles, “I shot at them.”

Everyone stares at her with horror. Oulo drops his silverware. “You _what?”_

She nods, lips pressed together. “I shot an arrow at them. Like Eren said, they weren’t paying attention at all. They had this roast pig that they were all fawning over, and I just got so angry that . . . I shot the apple out of its mouth.”

Unexpectedly, Eren throws his head back and laughs. Mikasa bristles, offended by his obvious delight at the doom she brought on herself. But then he shakes his head and grins at her, so full of warmth that it couldn’t possibly be mean-spirited. “Oh, man,” he says. “That’s amazing. Holy shit, Mikasa, what did they say?”

“Nothing. I don’t know. I thanked them for their consideration and walked out.”

“Without _being dismissed?”_ Oulo demands.

Eren is positively glowing. “I could kiss you, Mikasa. That’s incredible.”

Across the table, Hanji lets out a small laugh, too. “It’s a first, that’s for sure. I take it you got their attention?”

“Uh. Yes.”

Eren leans forward. “What were their faces like?”

“Shocked?” She thinks back. “Pretty ridiculous. One guy,” she recalls, “fell backwards into the drink bar and knocked it over.”

The table laughs again, making her feel a little better. “Don’t worry too much,” Hannes says. “At the very worst, you gave them a grudge against you that they’ll work out in the arena.”

Hearing Hannes and his thirty-odd years of experience say that makes her feel much better. Dinner continues on a lighter note after that, with her and Eren joining in the conversation where they can. At eight o’clock, they relocate to the living room to watch the scores be given. Mikasa pulls a pillow into her lap and bunches her fingers in its fabric anxiously. 

Mikasa could have guessed most of the scores. The Career kids get eights, nines, and tens. The rest of the tributes mostly get fours, fives, and sixes. Reiner gets a ten, which she saw coming, and little Louise manages a seven. 

When the screen changes to the crest of Shiganshina, they all draw a breath. Eren’s picture flashes up, anger burning in his eyes even through the screen, and over him flashes a nine.

A delighted cheer goes up from all of them. Eren looks surprised more than anything, and Hannes and Eld pat him on the back. “Good job, young doctor,” Hannes says. 

“That’s a great score,” Mikasa tells him. 

He flushes. “Thanks.”

And then the announcer says, “Mikasa Ackerman, district of Shiganshina.”

Her face on the television is completely stoic. In that light, in this context, she thinks she almost looks like Levi. She braces herself for a zero, telling herself anything above that is a blessing, and the announcer says, “Eleven.”

Hanji whoops and jumps up to give her a hug. Flabbergasted, Mikasa reciprocates, and the rest of the room claps. 

“Best score of the night!” Hannes crows. 

“I don’t understand,” she stammers. “I thought they’d be furious.”

He pulls a flask out of his suit jacket and takes a healthy swig. It’s the first time she’s seen him drink today, she realizes. He throws his hands in the air. “They liked your fire, girl on fire! And who wouldn’t, huh? Right?”

“Right,” Eren agrees. He holds out his hand for a high-five which Mikasa dutifully gives. “Good job,” he says. 

She thanks him. Eld orders cakepops and they exchange cheers with those. “To Eren Jaeger, the good young doctor!”

“To Eren!” Oulo is almost weepy. He’s very proud of them.

“And to Mikasa Ackerman, the girl on fire!”

“To Mikasa!” they cheer. 

It feels strange to accept Eren’s praise, but he’s so genuine about it. She supposes that she hopes Eren will win if she doesn’t, so the same is probably true for him. The winner’s district is showered in gifts for a year after the Games, so if either of them wins, both of their families will benefit. 

After she turns in for the night, she realizes something else troubling: she genuinely likes Eren. She was already partial to him for obvious reasons, but now that they’ve spent the past few days with each other constantly, she’s actually getting to know him a bit. And, unfortunately, she likes what she’s seen. He’s honest and fierce and unapologetically _Eren,_ which she already knew. But now she knows how he curses under his breath and that gets furious on behalf of belittled plants and that he can paint flowers and braid hair.

None of that is going to stop her from trying to win. But the idea of Eren Jaeger dying makes her gut twist. Even if she still thinks he may be trying to kill her.

The next morning, it’s time for training for the interview. Hannes tells her that she and Eren will be coached separately for this, since they have different strategies and etiquettes to learn and, “Frankly, junior, you both need our full attention.”

Mikasa spends the first four hours of the day relearning how to walk. Oulo sticks her in six-inch heels and a floor-length dress that weighs about twenty pounds. She has to learn to walk _properly_ and _politely._ Then, she has to learn how to sit. Somehow, this is harder than walking. Oulo rants about her posture endlessly, and smacks the underside of her chin about a thousand times. “You’re not a turtle, Mikasa,” he says. “Stop ducking your head. Let us see your pretty face!” She expects her habit of ducking her head was born of the seven years she spent hiding in Eren’s scarf. By lunchtime, she’s passed beyond annoyance and into dull acceptance.

After lunch, when Hannes coaches her for what she’ll actually say, she is informed that that’s a terrible look on her. 

“You’re the girl on fire,” he says. “The girl from Shiganshina who volunteered, the girl who scored an eleven. People are going to expect you to have a personality.”

“How unfortunate,” she deadpans. 

Hannes sighs. “Don’t try to be funny.”

“I thought you said you wanted a personality?”

“Yes, but you’re not funny. That’s the first joke I’ve heard you make in your whole life, and it wasn’t even good.”

She huffs. “Fine then. What am I?”

“From what I’ve gathered, Mitras sees you as not just Levi’s baby sister, but the entire nation’s. Somebody dug up footage of you as a baby at his wedding, and a few other clips from when you were little, and everyone is going bananas over them.” He steeples his fingers. “Honestly, I don’t know that you can go wrong, as long as you’re not openly hostile. You’ve been branded as passionate and sweet, but people know that you’re dangerous, now. If you were to act more like you do normally, people will just think of Levi, and that works, too.” He leans back in his chair. “Just answer the questions for me as well as you can. I’ll help you out when it’s necessary. Go.”

He spends hours quizzing her, eeking every iota of charm out of her. It’s no easy task. Mikasa . . . really doesn’t have a great deal of personality. She’s stoic, guarded, and focused. She spends most of her time alone in the woods. The only people who can coax much visible emotion out of her are Isabelle and Ben—even Petra and Historia struggle. More than that, she resents the people of the capital on principle, and imagining letting them—as well as literally every other person in the country—know her makes her uncomfortable. And apparently, her discomfort turns her into a “frigid bitch.”

“Just a bit,” Hannes says, consoling. “But you are giving me the impression that you want the audience to die.”

She wouldn’t mind it.

“Yeah, no, that won’t fly, junior. Try again. Passionate and sweet, remember?”

She’s passionate about not dying and sweet to small children. The audience is made up of adults who are about to cheerily send her to her death.

Now that she’s aware of her awkwardness, it actually becomes worse. Trying to force herself to be cheerful makes her come off as creepy. Trying to tone herself down makes her come off stilted. Trying to just say what people want to hear makes her come off stupid and shallow. When she talks about anything she actually cares about, she comes off as vulnerable in a way that Hannes says is unbecoming of a girl who scored an eleven and whose brother killed sixteen people.

They spend a lot of time talking about Levi. She supposes she should have expected that. Of course people want to know about the happy domestic life of the Ackerman family, so tragically cut short, just like Levi’s life. But--she can’t do it. She can’t talk about it. Not to these people.

By suppertime, Mikasa feels like her nerves have been flayed open and left in freezing rain. Hannes tells her to try to just be herself and let her looks, legacy, and reputation carry her and she should be fine. “It’s only three minutes,” he says. “Just don’t be openly hostile, okay?”

Grumpily, she says, “I think we just proved that I might not be able to do that.”

“You’ll have sponsors lining up around the block,” Hanji assures. 

“She’s right,” Eld agrees. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I won’t if I’m a frigid bitch with no personality.”

At this point, Eren and Oulo walk in. Eren immediately scowls. “What?”

“We’re talking about our interviews,” Hannes tells him. 

“Who the fuck said Mikasa had no personality?” He sits down angrily. Mikasa wonders how is it that he’s able to infuse every action with hostility. “Mikasa’s great. She’s sweet, smart, determined, badass—she has miles’ worth of personality!”

For some reason, Hannes chuckles. “There’s the attitude. Keep that up for your interview.”

Eren turns red and grumbles something. “Wait,” Mikasa says. “Why does Eren get to be openly hostile?”

“The young doctor gets to be angry because the entire country hasn’t spent the last four days cooing over his baby pictures.”

“You were an _adorable_ child, Mikasa,” Hanji gushes. “You were so smiley!”

 _Before my brother died and we lost everything, yes._ She takes a roll to butter it. “And now I’m not. Hannes said that if people realize I’m not this cheery, bubbly girl from the baby pictures, they won’t sponsor me.”

Eren scoffs. “That’s not true. And even if it was, it doesn’t matter. You can survive without anyone’s help.”

Maybe it’s that her childhood has been flung in her face so much the past few hours, but she sounds nine years old again when she says, “I’ve only survived _because_ I had someone’s help.”

His eyes drop to her bare throat. “And people will help you in the arena. You have no idea,” he says, and she cannot place the emotion in the hard tone of his voice, “what you do to people.”

The moment hangs there, bright and still like a firefly, for what feels like a long time. Then it shatters as Eld, holding a little screen in his hand, chuckles. “You _were_ a smiley baby, Miss Ackerman. And look at you now—you look so much like your mother.”

Mikasa looks away from Eren, tilting her head so that her hair falls over her shoulder and shields him from her view. What was _that?_ What did he mean, what she did to people? Was he insinuating that people helped her out of . . . what, pity? Obligation? Because of her mother’s looks, her brother’s name? Somehow that comment felt like an insult.

The food, at least, takes her mind off it. Dessert is a thick, goopy pudding that makes Mikasa weak at the knees. She moans when she puts the first spoonful in her mouth, and spends the next few minutes focusing on nothing but the flavor. It’s mostly chocolate, but there’s peanut butter and hints of spices swirled in as well. Mikasa wants to marry this pudding. 

Eventually, when she feels like she’s going to be sick, she excuses herself for the night. She spends an hour in the shower playing with the different settings and goes to sleep in a pair of soft, fuzzy pajamas. She dreams of the forest, Levi holding her hand and teaching her to sing and to stay alive, but when she opens her mouth the notes come out off-key and wrong. A hovercraft appears in the sky and takes Levi away, and she wakes up gasping.

The last day before the Games begin is both hectic and dragging. Her prep team—a young man called Flegel and two women named Carly and Caven—scrub her down and massage various lotions and oils into her until her skin seems to glow, chattering nonsensically all the while. She finds them mildly annoying, but they dote on her the way Izzy dotes on the cat. That’s probably part of why she’s so annoyed. 

After they brutalize her skin to their satisfaction, they get to work turning her into art. They paint flames on her nails, flames on her arms, flames on her neck. Caven weaves shimmering red ribbons into her hair and pulls it into a heavy braid over her right shoulder. Her face is redrawn: big gray eyes and full red lips, features accentuated by whatever strange makeup art they’ve accomplished. They cover her in orange glitter that shines only when the light hits it just so, so that her body is covered in a whirling storm of sparks. 

Finally, Hanji bounces into the room with her covered dress. When she sees her, she gasps. “Oh, Mikasa, honey, you look gorgeous.”

“They did some amazing work,” she agrees shyly.

Flegel titters and pats her cheek. “We had a lovely canvas to work on.”

“Okay, okay,” Hanji says. “Close your eyes.”

Mikasa obeys and they slip the dress over her head. She staggers a bit with the weight—it’s twice as heavy as the one Oulo had her practice in. Hanji grabs her hands and guides her into the heels, which, blessedly, are three inches shorter and much thicker than the ones she wore this afternoon. Hanji adjusts the dress, and then breathes, “Okay. Open your eyes.”

She does. 

The girl in the mirror is made of fire. Her dress is made of thousands of gemstones, red and orange and golden and white and blue, cut and laid with such precision that the stones perfectly mimic flame. Any movement causes the licks of fire to shift, causes sparks to dance across her skin. 

Mikasa has always had a complex relationship with her looks, but now there is no questioning it. She is nothing short of glorious. 

Overcome, she throws her arms around Hanji. “Thank you,” she whispers. 

“Of course, honey,” the woman says. “You lot can go to your seats now. It’s starting soon.”

Her prep team nod their heads and leave, whispering about how amazing it—she—is. 

Hanji has her walk around to get used to moving in the dress (and, she suspects, make absolutely certain that the sleeveless dress won’t fall off her). The skirt is shorter in the front, maybe to show off her shoes, so she doesn’t have to hold it while she walks. She gets the hang of it, mostly. She hasn’t spent her life creeping through the woods to be defeated by _heels._ She even gives a little twirl, which makes Hanji clap with delight. 

“Oh, make sure you do that one stage! I couldn’t have asked,” she says, eyes shining, “for a better girl on fire.”

“I couldn’t have asked for a better stylist,” Mikasa says. She really can’t thank Hanji enough. 

“Thank you.” Hanji says. “So. Are you ready?”

Mikasa groans. “No. You didn’t hear me yesterday, Hanji, nothing I said came out right. I’m either a frigid bitch or a try-hard or a girl too ‘vulnerable’ to have gotten an eleven.”

“Well, there’s your problem. You’re trying to be one of those things. You’re all of them.” She seems to realize what she said and backtracks, waving her hands. “I mean that in the best way possible! You are a stoic badass, and you’re a sweetheart, too. Just be yourself. It’s worked so far, hasn’t it? Everybody loves you.”

“That’s different. I can’t just be myself to ten million people.”

She taps her chin. “How about this, then? Pretend you’re talking to a friend. Who’s your best friend?”

“Historia Reiss,” she says. “But I wouldn’t be talking about this stuff with her, we’ve known each other since we were babies.”

“Well, would it work if you pretended it was me?” Hanji smiles at her, brown eyes sparkling behind her glasses. “You and I don’t know each other so well, but I like to think you’re my friend.”

Mikasa likes to think so, too. “Yes,” she says hesitantly. 

“There you go, then. I’ll be close to the stage with all the other stylists, you can look at me if you need to. And, hey. They already love you. You’re on fire!”

With that, it’s time to go. Mikasa is the very last person to arrive at the stage. The rest of the tributes are already gathered, waiting for the cue to walk onto the stage assembled outside the Tribute Center, as well as seats for about a quarter of a million people. All of Paradis is watching tonight. 

She waits next to Eren, who looks especially handsome in a coal-black suit with detailed flame accents. He seems as anxious as she does, though he does stop fidgeting when he sees her and stares, wide-eyed. 

“Wow,” he says. “You look amazing.”

She ducks her head. “You look nice, too.”

“Yeah,” he agrees distractedly. “Are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

He blows out a breath, drumming his fingers on his leg. “Yeah. Not looking forward to this.”

“You’ll be fine,” she says. Even if he’s not particularly charming, Eren is the most attractive boy this year by a mile.

To her surprise, he just grimaces. Before she can do more than tilt her head in question, the national anthem blares from all sides and it’s time to take their places in a long arc on the stage. They line up single-file in their places, by district and ladies first. Mikasa will be going second-to-last, but this doesn’t concern her the way it had with the Gamemakers. No one will be too bored to pay _her_ attention, certainly not looking like this. 

Still, she has plenty of time to get nervous. Each interview is three minutes, and she gets to hear how each one of her competitors charms the audience. Annie is cold and prepared. Bertolt is calm and confident. Hitch is snarky. Mina is chipper. Tom is determined. Louise is shy, but Dot Pixis—who has been hosting the tribute interviews since before even Levi’s time—manages to coax a laugh out of her. Mikasa’s heart pounds out of her chest while Reiner charms the pants off the nation, and then the buzzer goes off and it’s her turn. 

She swallows and stands, makes her way up the steps to roaring applause. The lights are hot and blinding, and the weight of her dress is trying to drag her down. 

“Miss Ackerman, Miss Ackerman,” Pixis says. “It is so lovely to see you again. I met you once when you were a little baby, do you remember?”

Mikasa shakes her head. She hadn’t known that. 

“Ah, I didn’t expect you to.” He smiles, grandfatherly. “This was at your brother’s wedding. A moment that wasn’t caught on camera, actually. Tell me, do you still like chocolate as much as you did as a baby?

“Um,” she says. “Yes.” She remembers Hannes’s advice about flattery. “There was this chocolate pudding last night, I almost ate myself sick on it.”

Pixis laughs. “Oh, I think I know what you’re talking about! With the peanut butter and the cinnamon?” She nods. “I feel just the same! Well, it certainly doesn’t show on you! You have grown into such a beautiful young woman.”

“Thanks,” she says. She’s positive it’s awkward. “My stylist did an amazing job,” she tries. 

“Oh, yes!” Pixis nods. “I wanted to ask you about that. This is your first time in the city. Quite an entrance you made! I have to know, what were you thinking?

“Well. Once I was confident that we weren’t going to burn to death,” she says—Pixis and the audience laugh. “I was . . . genuinely honored to have such an amazing costume and stylist. Thank you, Hanji, truly. For that and for this.” She gestures down to her dress. “Look at this!”

In the audience, Mikasa sees Hanji make a little circle motion with her finger, so Mikasa twirls in a quick circle. The crowd’s reaction is instant—gasps, shouts, cheers. “Do that again,” Pixis demands, so she spreads her arms out and spins a few times, letting the illusionary flames wow the audience. The dress is heavy enough that it feels like throwing weights. When she stops, dizzy, she has to grab Pixis’s hand for balance. She’s also giggling, which she doesn’t think she’s done since she was nine years old. Her anxiety and the dizziness have gotten to her.

“Oh, careful there,” Pixis says, steadying her. “Careful.”

“Thank you,” she gasps. 

“Not to worry, I won’t let you fall! So. _Miss Ackerman._ I have to ask about that eleven.” He levels her with a look. “Did your brother teach you what you needed for that?”

“Huh,” she says. There are a lot of different answers to that, but she’s pretty sure all of them fall somewhere between forbidden and illegal. It’s a good thing they’re not supposed to talk about their private training sessions. “I think all I can say is that . . . he probably would have approved.”

The audience laughs. 

“Speaking of your brother,” Pixis says, more serious now. “He passed when you were nine years old, yes?”

The smile melts off her face. “Yes.”

The hovercraft crash that had killed her brother and a number of Mitran officials and celebrities had been the worst accident of the decade. Everyone knew about it. Everyone had _seen_ it. The explosion, the way the shattered pieces of it had rained down, the ensuing catastrophic forest fire. Mikasa used to have a recurring dream that the fires, which had been just north of the capital city, had spread all the way to Shiganshina, and burned down her home and her woods. 

“The nation mourned with you,” Pixis says. “He was a dearly beloved man. I like to think he was a friend. But not one of us knew the side of him that you must have. Would you mind telling us what he was like as a brother?”

Yes. She would mind. But—she must. She looks back to Hanji in the audience, who is smiling encouragingly. Mikasa thinks Levi would have liked Hanji. She is fun in a way that he appreciated, and smart enough that he would have tolerated her. 

“He was very different from what people might think,” she says. “Levi’s my half-brother. His mother died when he was little, and our father married my mom just before his Games. I was born when he was nineteen. And then my parents died when I was four. Levi was . . . very much like a father to me. He was kinder than I think people expect. And sillier.” She remembers the bathroom jokes, the way he would play tea-party with her and Izzy. 

“He was as much as a clean-freak as you’d expect,” she adds. The crowd titters. “And he made us do chores from the time we could walk. But he always helped us. He spoiled us, really.” Her throat tightens. “Our dad had to work a lot when he was young, after his mom died. So Levi wanted to make sure that we wouldn’t—”

 _Grow up without him,_ she means to say. But the words just won’t come out. “He was a good brother,” she manages. “I . . .”

“I understand.” Pixis pats her hand. “If it’s okay with you, just one more question. “We,” you said. You meant your niece, Isabelle? Can you tell us about her?”

“Yes.” She swallows. “Izzy. She’s only twelve. She’s the gentlest girl in the world. I . . . I love her more than anything.”

Now, the crowd is silent. 

“It was very brave, what you did,” he tells her. “What did she say to you, after the reaping?’

Mikasa has to find Hanji again. “She told me I had to try to win. That . . . I could.”

“I’m sure she did.” Pixis kisses her hand. “No matter what happens, I’ve no doubt that you’ve made your brother proud.” The buzzer goes off. “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give it up for Mikasa Ackerman, district of Shiganshina!”

The applause is deafening. She floats back to her seat in a daze, missing the first half of Eren’s interview. She thinks he talks about being a doctor’s son--he makes some comment about scalpels that sends the audience roaring with laughter. His voice sounds angry, but Pixis twists his righteous fury into the surliness of a teenager. She turns her attention back to the screen in time for Pixis to ask Eren if he has a girlfriend back at home. 

Eren coughs. “No.”

Pixis grins. “Ah, handsome boy like you, there must be _someone_ special. Come on, we’re all friends here!”

He grimaces. “There is . . . this girl. I’ve had a crush on her forever. But I don’t think she even knew my name until the reaping.”

The audience coos and sighs. How sympathetic. 

“Does she have a boyfriend?”

“Nah. But she’s the prettiest girl in our district. Tons of guys like her.”

Pixis smiles. “Well then, here’s what you do, hm? You win, you go home, you ask her out. She can’t turn you down, eh?”

Cheers of encouragement fill the air. Eren, however, just turns steadily redder, and the embarrassment on his face slides away, replaced by genuine . . . pain? Discomfort? He swallows. “Actually, I, uh. I don’t think winning will help me any.”

Pixis, and the audience, is baffled. “Why ever not?”

Eren’s gaze flickers around, blue-green eyes searching for a safe place to land and deciding on his own clenched fists as he mutters, “‘Cause she came here with me.”

***

Mikasa doesn’t quite realize that he means _her_ until her own face replaces Eren’s on the screen. Then she sees herself, wide-eyed, blush scarlet and put her hand over her mouth, trying to pull the scarf up to hide in but finding it gone. She ducks her head, using her bangs as a shield, trying to conceal about seven different reactions.

“Oh,” Pixis murmurs. “That’s a rotten bit of luck.”

Eren swallows. “Yeah.”

“Well, who could blame you?” he asks gently. “Miss Ackerman is a remarkable girl. She didn’t know until now?”

Eren fidgets in his seat. “I don’t think so? I’m not a very subtle person, but like I said, we didn’t really . . . talk that much.”

Mikasa forces herself to exhale through her nose. She feels a bit like she was hit by a train of some strong emotion, but she can’t place it yet. 

The buzzer goes off, and Pixis shakes his head. “Best of luck to you, Eren Jaeger. I speak for all of Paradis when I say that our hearts go out to you.”

The audience goes wild, more enthusiastic than they have been for anything else all night. Eren has completely stolen the show. Nothing else will be half as memorable as his confession. After a long, long moment, Pixis waving them down, the applause finally dies enough for Eren to manage a strangled “Thanks,” and return to his seat. 

Mikasa chances looking up at the screen and finds it locked on her and Eren. They’re both beet red and look immensely uncomfortable. Eren is turned away from her, his left hand scratching his neck. Mikasa leans her head forward so that her braid partially blocks her face. She’s pretty sure Eren doesn’t even look at her though. She can feel the tension radiating off of him, making her feel even worse. 

They stand for the national anthem and then are dismissed. Mikasa all but sprints for an elevator while Eren hangs back. Every other tribute in the car side-eyes her the whole time, but none of them say anything. 

Back on the twelfth floor, Mikasa kicks off her shoes and paces. She’s finally identified her emotions as a mix of _anger_ and _mortification_ when the elevator opens again, doors opening to reveal the rest of Team Shiganshina. Eren grimaces at the sight of her, which is an appropriate reaction since as soon as he steps into the room, she punches him square in the jaw.

“What was that?” she demands.

He gapes at her from the floor, mouth open in incredulity. “What was _that?”_

“Woah, _woah,”_ Hannes says, yanking her away. Mikasa jerks her shoulders out of his grip and crosses her arms. “Mind telling us what the fuck that was about?”

“He had no right to say that about me,” she seethes. “He made me look like an idiot.”

 _“What,”_ Eren says, standing. “How the fuck would _my_ crush on you make _you_ look stupid?” 

“You sure look stupid right now,” Hannes sneers. “Do you have any idea the advantage that boy just gave you? People were invested in you for your brother’s sake, before, but now they’re invested in _you.”_

Her mouth parts. She hadn’t . . . 

“You had a nostalgia factor, and you showed you had some spirit when you volunteered for your niece, but really, how interesting were you? Who do you think will have more sponsors? The girl whose only real notable trait is her _dead_ brother, or the girl who’s one-half of the most tragic love story of all time?”

“Wha—we’re not—!”

He closes his eyes as if to pray for strength. “It’s a television show, Mikasa. It doesn’t matter what you are or aren’t, it’s what the audience believes.”

She twists her mouth and absorbs his words. He’s—right. Of course he is. People had loved Levi, and she has gathered some attention from that alone, but when they realize she isn’t the killing machine he had been . . . Without Levi there to react to her being in danger, there isn’t much drama. The shine of a pretty new Ackerman would have worn off. And what else had she had, really, besides her connection to Levi? Her eleven? Her devotion to her family? Even her looks— all of those are wrapped up in her brother.

But Eren has given her a new depth. Levi had quietly married his high school sweetheart, kept her and their family tucked out of the spotlight. He wasn’t romantic. But Mikasa—

“Did you think,” she says slowly, “that I could have—liked him, too? When he said that?”

“I did,” Hanji admits. “You turned _bright_ red.”

“Your reaction was perfect, junior,” Hannes says, gentler now. “The pair of you will have people getting into fistfights over who gets to sponsor you.”

Mikasa looks at Eren. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have punched you.”

He rolls his eyes. “Honestly, I don’t know what else I expected.”

She bites her lip. “Is your face okay?”

“It’ll be fine, Mikasa,” he sighs. “Let’s just get dinner.”

They eat supper on the couch, watching the rerun of the interviews. As they eat, a bruise begins to darken on the corner of Eren’s jaw, which makes her feel awful. She takes some ice out of the bucket that holds the liquor—that Hannes hasn’t touched—and wraps it in her napkin before passing it to him. He looks at her flatly for a long moment before he takes it with a muttered, “Thanks.” Despite his jaw, Eren manages to eat approximately six pounds of the cheesy sausage flatbread they’re eating. Mikasa is genuinely impressed.

Hanji orders the pudding from last night again. When Eren’s interview comes at last, she ducks her head down and eats without making eye contact with anyone. Even knowing it’s just a strategy—and a _brilliant_ one, in truth—doesn’t manage to completely negate the embarrassment. To say nothing of poor Eren. It was a genius move, and made him completely unforgettable, but it must have been absolutely mortifying. 

And then dinner is over and the screen shuts off, and the end begins. 

The Games will begin at ten tomorrow morning. Hannes and Oulo will be at the Games Headquarters, hopefully making deals with sponsors and all the other tasks that come with being a mentor or a tribute escort. Hanji and Eld will escort Mikasa and Eren, separately, to their chambers in the hovercrafts and then to their chambers under the arena, where they will be launched. 

“Well,” Hannes says, placing a hand on each of their shoulders. “Listen up. You’re both off to a good start. Don’t try to get to the Cornucopia. Neither of you are good enough to go up against the bloodbath. When the gong sounds, just get the fuck away from anybody else and find water. High ground, if you can.”

Eren nods grimly. “And then?”

“And then stay alive.” He pats their backs. “Rely on your sponsors. The pair of you . . . I’ve got high hopes.”

 _The pair of you,_ he says. 

But they all know that they won’t both survive.

***

She can’t fall asleep.

She doesn’t know why she had any illusions otherwise. She might die before the sun has the chance to set again. She wishes she hadn’t missed it today. She wishes she could see the stars, trace out the constellations that Levi had taught her, lying on the grass in their backyard. She wishes Levi was here with her. She wishes she _wasn’t_ here. 

Where will she be tomorrow? A desert? A tundra? A cave system, cavernous and crushing by turns, like Levi’s games? They’re going to wake her before dawn. What if she never sees the sun again? 

The thought causes spasms of panic. Her room is too warm. Mikasa kicks off her blankets and begins to pace, but she only gets warmer. The walls seem to be closing in on her. Like they’re watching. Like they’re _hunting._

Mikasa needs out. 

As she has always done when desperate, she flees to the outdoors. She can’t leave the building of course. It’s been a cage this whole time, but only now does it feel like it. But there is one place she can go to smell something like the woods again. 

The door to the roof is unlocked, thank God. She pushes it open and dashes out into the cool night air, headed straight for the garden. She instantly begins to shiver in the wind. The air feels sharp and clean in her lungs, and the windchimes could almost be mistaken for birdsong if it weren’t for the loud sounds of a celebration. 

Curious, she walks over to the edge of the building, and then very nearly jumps out of her skin when Eren Jaeger seemingly materializes out of thin air in a lawn chair and says, “Just so you know, you can’t jump.”

“What?” she says, heart jackrabbiting somewhere into the stratosphere even as she tries to keep an even expression. 

Eren stares blankly down at the city, elbows on his knees, steepled fingers under his chin. “There’s a forcefield. Eld explained it to me when he first took me up. Apparently, way back in the early days, a tribute tried to take the easy way out. Now it’s not even an option.”

His voice is completely flat, his eyes completely cold. This is an Eren that is unfamiliar to her. “Makes sense, I guess,” she says hesitantly. 

He huffs. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“No.” She crosses her arms against the wind, wishing she had a robe like Eren’s. “I doubt any of us can.”

“Yeah. Lucky us, with the rooftop access.”

“Lucky us,” she echoes.

“Were you thinking about your family?”

She shakes her head. “Not really. Just wondering about tomorrow. Where we’ll be. What about you?”

“A bit of both. And . . .” he blows out a breath and stands, leaning over the railing. “I wish I had some way to show them—” he gestures to the crowd below “—that they don’t fucking own me. I was born into this world, the same as them. I’m not some animal to die for their entertainment. I’m not their slave. I’m _me.”_

Mikasa blinks. “. . . You mean that you won’t kill anyone?” She knows that some tributes have chickened out in the final moments, but she doesn’t think she remembers anyone going in with the philosophy of pacifism. And if she were to take bets on anyone doing that, Eren Jaeger would be at the very bottom of her list.

True to form, he snorts. “Nah. I’m not going down without a fight.” He drums his fingers on the railing and straightens his back, looking down at her. “But you see what I mean, don’t you? They’ve put me here, put us both here, but this is still _my_ life. I can do what I want with it, right?”

“It’s not like you can choose to leave the arena.”

“No. But in the arena, there’s still you. There’s still me. Do you get it? I don’t want to die as something they made me.”

“I just don’t want to die at all,” Mikasa says quietly. 

He exhales. “Me neither.” 

She shivers with a particularly strong gust of wind, and Eren shrugs off his robe and drapes it over her shoulders. It’s warm from his body heat and it smells like the mint soap that the showers dispense. When he’d thrown her the scarf, tied around those two life-saving loaves of bread, it had carried the scent of fresh bread for days, even after Petra had washed it and dried it over the fire. If she’s going to thank him for that precious gift, it has to be now. It _has_ to be now. 

The light of the city is reflected in Eren’s eyes, and the wind blows his hair across his forehead. She can see the bruise she left on him, darkened to a molted purple. The look on his face is strange. His eyes are shining, blazing with intensity, and something shifts in them—some sudden resolve—and he shifts just a fraction of an inch and this _scares_ her, so—

“Thank you,” she blurts. “Eren, I—”

He cuts her off. “It’s fine.”

“But—”

“Mikasa.” He shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it. Seriously. I wouldn’t change it.” With a twist of his lips that may or may not be meant to be a smile, he catches a strand of her hair and tugs it lightly. “You look cold.”

The use of present tense indicates this moment, him giving her his robe, but they both know that’s not what they’re talking about. 

Well. She tried. She had tried that first day back at school, too. If Eren doesn’t want her to bring it up, that’s okay. At least he knows, now. Maybe this is him saying they have a clear slate. They don’t, of course. Especially since the whole star-crossed lovers angle is his idea. But at least she thanked him.

“We should probably get back inside,” he murmurs. “At least try to get some sleep.”

She nods. This talk with Eren has calmed her at least a little.

In the end, she doesn’t get any sleep, but that doesn’t matter come morning. When the red-headed Avox girl comes in to fetch her, Mikasa still is thrumming with energy like a live wire. She thanks the girl, who gives her a sweet, close-lipped smile, and escorts her to Hanji. The next few hours pass in a blur: she and Hanji board the hovercraft that will take them to the arena. A woman in a white doctor’s getup injects her with a tracker. The flight is about half an hour. It’s spent mostly in silence, as Mikasa is too nervous to speak, but Hanji holds her hand and coaxes her into eating a hearty breakfast that tastes like ashes. 

Too soon, they’re in her launch room. Hanji produces a hairband and braids her hair over her shoulder. Her tribute outfit is given to her: a green shirt, sturdy black pants, a black jacket that falls to her mid-thighs, and solid leather boots. It’s a good outfit, means she’ll probably be somewhere temperate. She’s sending thanks to whoever designed the boots for making them so comfortable and good for running when Hanji takes out a paper bag. “One last thing,” she says, and when she pulls out the scarf, Mikasa lets out a sharp cry. 

“Your token,” she says, as Mikasa grabs it and clutches it to her chest. Hanji smiles. “I was told it almost didn’t make it through. A scarf could be an unfair advantage in keeping warm. But it passed.”

Mikasa nods, overcome. Regardless of its connection to Eren Jaeger and her complicated feelings about their situation, this scarf has always been such a source of comfort, of _hope._ Its return makes her feel better than she could have imagined. 

She ties it tightly, tucking the tails into the front of her shirt. When she pulls it up over her mouth, it still smells like Shiganshina’s forest. 

Before she has time to take any comfort from that, though, a dull tone chimes over the speaker, telling her to get on her platform. 

Mikasa’s heart stutters, and then begins to pound furiously. Hanji helps her to her feet and guides her to the disk on the floor that will lift her into the arena. “Remember what Hannes told you,” Hanji says soothingly. “Just skedaddle and find water. Then just take it one step at a time.” She squeezes her hand. “It’ll be okay,” she says. “I mean that, girl on fire. I’m betting on you.”

“Thank you,” Mikasa says. “Hanji, really. Thank you. You’ve done so much for me”

“And I have more for you yet,” she says. “I’ll show you soon, okay?”

She can’t bring herself to agree. She might be dead in five minutes. She might be _dead_ in _five minutes._ And then a crystal cylinder lowers from the ceiling, trapping her and cutting her off. Her pulse hammers in her wrists, in her temples, in her throat, tucked under her scarf. The floor raises, carrying her through suffocating darkness and then into blinding light. She only has time to recognize the smell of pine before she hears, from the sky, the voice of the famous announcer Nile Dok says, calmly:

“Ladies and gentlemen. Let the Ninety-Ninth Hunger Games . . . begin!”


	4. this world, it's cruel, with troubles aplenty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from "Pure as the Driven Snow" by Suzanne Collins

The minute between his words and the bell that will release them is the longest of her life. The tributes stand on their circles, choosing which direction to run. If they move an inch off their plate before the bell, though, landmines buried under their plates will blow their legs off.

Mikasa tries to take steady breaths as she decides what she must do. To her right is a huge lake. Behind her and to her left, a tall pine forest. And before her: the Cornucopia. 

Shaped like the ornament featured in the Harvest Festival, the giant, glittering golden horn overflows with supplies. The twenty-four of them are positioned in a circle around it, each of them fifty yards from the horn. She’s lucky enough to be facing the mouth. She can see the goodies. Right off the bat she notices a tent around the size of her bedroom back home, a shelf of javelins, crates of what must be non-perishable food. The loot is better the closer you get to the mouth, of course. Five feet in front of her is a square of plastic that she imagines could function as a makeshift raincoat; fifty feet away is a backpack; another fifteen feet and she spots a knife.

Mikasa needs a _weapon._ She can’t do anything without a weapon. Forget about fighting the other tributes, she won’t even be able to feed herself. But she spots Annie three tributes to her right, and Annie knows how to throw knives better than Mikasa ever could. 

Thirty seconds left. She focuses back on the mouth of the Cornucopia. And there is it. The bow. Already strung. A quiver full of arrows. 

Mikasa is fast. She’s the fastest runner in the school. She could get to that bow first, she’s sure of it. But what then? There’s one loaded shot, and the bow isn’t a short-range weapon. The others—Annie, Hitch, Reiner—are fast, too. By the time she had her hands on it, they’d be there, close enough to use their knives and their swords and their spears on her, and she couldn’t fight them all off. She’s a target, they would be on her. But if she could keep alive for the ten, fifteen seconds that she would be close enough to kill, she would have a _bow._ If she has a bow, she can win. She knows she can. 

Mikasa is setting her jaw, making up her mind, when she finds Eren. He’s staring at her, five tributes away, shaking his head _no._

And then the bell tolls, and the other tributes fly off. Mikasa wastes precious moments on her confusion, and she knows that she’s missed her chance at the bow. Too slow. 

Furious with herself, she lunges forward and grabs the sheet of plastic, a loaf of bread. She sees the backpack she was eyeing earlier and sprints forward for it. Despite her lost seconds, she reaches it before the other tribute who was going for it—a boy she can’t place—but he still gets a grip on one of the straps and tries to pull it from her. She yanks back and he releases it with cough—which is actually _blood,_ and he falls over _dead,_ a knife buried in his back—

Mikasa looks up exactly long enough to register Annie’s blonde hair and spins on her heels and runs. She slings the backpack over her shoulders, clutching the bread and the plastic in one hand, and sprints. Adrenaline all but gives her wings. 

Instinct demands that she pulls the pack over the back of her head and she obeys without question. The backpack shifts with a _thunk_ as a knife lodges into it. Mikasa keeps running, clearing the treeline the next second. 

She doesn’t slow from her sprint for a long, long minute, but by the time she does, the animal panic has receded. Settling into a sustainable jog, she slings the pack off her shoulders to wriggle the knife out. It’s not one of the dainty ones specifically for flashy murder, but an actual _knife,_ long and serrated, as good for stabbing as it is for sawing. Useful. She tucks it into her belt. She unzips the pack to stuff in her bread and plastic but doesn’t sit down to examine the rest of the backpack’s contents. She’ll want to be in a defensible position before she lets her guard down.

When the sun tells midafternoon, the canons from the bloodbath go off. Ten. Each one means a tribute death. Normally, they fire mere moments after death, but since so many die in the first few hours, they hold off. 

Ten tributes dead. Miaksa could have easily been one of them. If she and that boy had traded places. If she hadn’t pulled her pack up and let it catch the knife. If she had gone into the bloodbath after all. 

Her mind flashes to Eren, shaking his head at her. Fourteen of them are still alive. He’d told her not to go to the Cornucopia, which she assumes means that he had run, too. So he must be fine, then.

Mikasa ducks her nose into the scarf. She really shouldn’t be hoping for that. If he’s alive, it’s nearly twice as likely that they’ll run into each other. And nothing good can come from that, in the end. Only one of them can go home.

She shakes those thoughts off. _More important things to focus on,_ she tells herself. Like finding water, and a place to spend the night. _At least there are trees._

She continues to hike until nightfall, taking careful stock of her surroundings. She’s truly lucked out. The woods are similar enough to Shiganshina’s that she suspects they genuinely are somewhere in the Maria mountains. She recognizes most of the flora, and she’s seen the occasional rabbit and heard mockingjays singing. If she tries, she can almost imagine that she’s back home. But her hands are empty and her throat is parched. If she were back home, she would know where the streams are. If she can’t find water soon, she’ll be in trouble. 

When the mockingjays’ songs begin to be replaced with owls’ hoots, Mikasa gives up on finding water for the night. A particularly tall willow tree in a cluster of them all but has her name on it, so up she climbs. While she’s the tallest girl this year, she’s positive that branches will begin to break under even Annie's weight at the height she’s climbed to.

The perks of having spent the past seven years on the brink of starvation. 

Once she’s reasonably comfortable in a fork that she’s sure is invisible from the ground, Mikasa finally unzips her backpack. She pulls out the bread and rips off a hunk of it—she’s hungry and bread goes stale fast and carefully begins to assess the rest of her goodies. A thin black sleeping bag: excellent. A pack of crackers, dried fruits, and beef jerky: also great. Cushioning for if food is hard to come by. A coil of wire: super. She can rig snares with this. Wooden matches: okay. She knows how to make a fire without them, but it certainly makes it easier. She also knows better than to start a fire, though. Sunglasses: alright. A bottle of iodine and an empty half-gallon bottle of water: they’ll be great once she finds water. Which she has to do soon or she will die. 

Still, all things considered, Mikasa has done alright for herself on this first day. She survived, uninjuried, and her prospects aren’t terrible. She really shouldn’t ask for more. If only she had water. Or a bow. She puts everything back into the backpack except the sleeping bag and unrolls the sleeping bag. She stuffs the backpack inside and crawls in herself. Mikasa is tall for a girl, but even with the backpack by her feet, she’s able to fit her entire body in the sleeping bag. It reflects her body heat back at her, so she’s nice and toasty in the rapidly cooling night air. As one last precaution, she unfastens her belt and then loops it around the branch and the bag. This way, if she rolls over, she won’t fall to the ground and break her neck. It takes some doing, but she’s actually able to get comfortable. 

All of the sudden, the sky, already dark, blackens and the national crest of Paradis takes the place of the moon as the national anthem blares from all directions. The death recap. 

The faces of the ten tributes who died today hang in the sky for long moments, taking each others’ places. Mikasa finds herself holding her breath towards the end, one hand fisted in her scarf, but the last face they show is the boy from another one of the outer districts, and then the anthem fades away and moon and stars come back. 

She runs a tally in her head. The Career pack is intact. Reiner is still alive. So is little Louise, who stands on her toes to look taller. And so is Eren. 

Weariness begins to drag her to sleep even as prey instinct insists that she remains watchful. She needs sleep. She got none last night, and she can’t survive battling both dehydration and exhaustion. Determining that she’s as safe as she’ll be in the arena, she allows her muscles to relax, her eyes to close. She curls onto her side, head pillowed on her elbows and the soft, worn fabric of her scarf. 

It feels like her eyes have only just shut when she jolts awake, but the moon has moved halfway across the sky. She sits up carefully, looking through the willows’ branches at the ground around her. There—what woke her. A _snap._ Loud and sharp. And then more of them, rhythmic. Mikasa’s hand tenses, preparing to snatch the knife out of her belt, but she soon realizes that it’s not the sound of someone climbing, or even walking. Someone is breaking branches off of a tree. 

Silent, Mikasa strains her ears. The snapping stops after a minute, replaced by vague sounds of movement. When she realizes what this person is trying to do, she has to bite back a groan; when they succeed in lighting a fire, she briefly considers climbing down to kill them herself. This idiot really started a fire in the middle of the night, broadcasting their location—and Mikasa’s by extension—to anyone who wants to know. The smoke drifts high into the star-filled sky, easily spotted and easily tracked.

Mikasa grits her teeth. She can’t get back to sleep now. There’s an enemy not a thousand feet away from her, and very likely more on the way.

There’s nothing for her to do except angrily lie in her sleeping bag. When boredom begins to replace anger and fear, she begins to braid the fringe of her scarf, thinking up all sorts of creative insults for her fire-starting neighbor. She gets it, it’s a cold night and they’re not lucky enough to have a sleeping bag, but that’s a personal problem. Mikasa didn’t ask to be dragged into this. 

The rest of the night drags by agonizingly slowly. The sky has only just begun to turn to dawn’s purple when she hears what she’s been dreading all night: footsteps. 

Several pairs. Running.

They’re on Mikasa’s neighbor before the poor girl has the chance to even stand. She can tell she’s a girl by the pleading, by the high pitch of the scream that abruptly cuts off with a wet gurgle—

She presses her hands over her mouth, willing herself frozen and silent. She hears the group laughing, congratulating each other, checking the girl for supplies and expressing disappointment. They walk away from the body to let the hovercraft come collect it. Towards Mikasa, who dares not even breathe.

She places the voices: Annie, Bertolt, Floch, the pair from Stohess. She even hears Reiner. So he joined with the Career pack. She can’t bring herself to be surprised. 

“Eleven down, twelve to go!” Floch cheers. “Going fast, lads!”

“Let’s get out of here,” Annie says. “Let them get the body.”

“Shouldn’t we have heard a cannon by now?” Bertolt asks. 

“Hm. Yeah. We’re far enough away.”

“Sure she’s dead?”

“She’s dead.”

“Then where’s the cannon?” 

An argument breaks out. The tensions tend to run high in these fraught, temporary alliances, and Mikasa wonders if she’s about to witness a second bloodbath until one voice trumps the others. 

“For fuck’s sake, we’re wasting time. I’ll go finish her off, and then we’ll keep on.”

The sound of grumbles and stomping cover the rustles of Mikasa’s sleeping bag as she nearly tips sideways out of the tree. 

Her new vantage point gives her a crack in the willow boughs to look through, and her eyes confirm what her ears already told her: 

Eren Jaeger is with the Careers.

***

“Why haven’t we killed him?”

Mikasa is wondering the same thing. Why _haven’t_ they killed him? Why didn’t _she_ kill Eren Jaeger? Why hasn’t _anyone?_

Because this lying, manipulating, arrogant, boy is _asking for it._

“Because he’s our best chance of finding her,” Bertolt says tiredly.

“You really think she bought all that romance stuff?” Annie says. “She seemed smarter than that.”

Reiner answers. “Eren would know better, wouldn’t he? They went to the same school.” He claps one or both of them on the shoulder with his huge hands. “Besides, what’s the harm?”

“None, I guess,” Floch says grumpily. “He's not bad with that knife.”

Mikasa can’t risk moving. She’s hanging from the tree by the belt and her arms, one leg still inside the sleeping bag hooked over the branch. If she tries to right herself, she’ll make noise. If they hear her, she’s dead. Simple as that. 

Then she guesses they’d kill Eren, though, so at least her death wouldn’t be _totally_ unsatisfying. 

Annie says, “Think Ackerman is good with a knife?”

“Bet Lover Boy could tell us.”

“Bet he won’t,” Bertolt says. Leaves rustle with footsteps, then he says, “Was she dead?”

“No,” Eren says. “But she is now.” 

A cannon sounds in confirmation. Mikasa flinches. 

“Can we go?” His voice is hard and steady, without any emotion but . . . something between boredom and irritation. Mikasa’s heartbeat thunders in her ears.

As the pack begins to walk, Mikasa sees Eren through the leaves as they walk away—if any one of them were to turn, they might see her. But she can see them. Eren has blood splattered on his face, on his neck, on his hands. The bruise she left on his jaw is dark, and joined by a new one on his cheek. The rest of them seem to have few enough injuries, but Floch has a black eye and is holding his arm awkwardly. 

They’re out of sight quickly enough, but Mikasa waits a careful minute before pulling herself back into the tree. Above her, a single mockingjay cries before a hovercraft appears in the sky, a claw coming down to collect the body of the girl that Eren just killed.

She takes a deep breath. Dawn is beginning to break in earnest now. The darkness and the willow branches have probably made it difficult for cameras to get a decent shot of her, but that will change as soon as she’s on the ground. She needs to decide how to act. Eren has completely thrown a wrench into the whole star-crossed-lovers shtick. The audience knows it, and they know that she knows it. They must be desperate for her reaction. Do they have some insight into Eren's motives that she doesn’t? They must. But what insight? What do they expect her to do? 

_Why_ is Eren with the Careers? As her anger cools off and she begins to consider, she’s mostly just surprised. He’s not the team-player sort—but then again, the love story helped them both—but—

With a frustrated sigh, Mikasa decides to just _not_ react as much as possible. Can’t go wrong with that, really. She wriggles out of her sleeping bag and stuffs it in her backpack. Her feet dangling off the branch, she eats her bread and then climbs down the tree. She can almost _feel_ the cameras focus on her as soon as she steps into the daylight, so she keeps her face expressionless and sets off, perpendicular to the direction the Careers chose.

The day, while entirely uneventful, is bad. 

She spends it searching for water and finds none. Come nightfall, she’s so weak from dehydration that she can only barely climb a tree and strap herself in. Her head throbs, her limbs are shaky, and her mouth is so dry it hurts to even inhale through it. She falls asleep too easily, waking only briefly for the death recap (only the girl that Eren killed) and slipping back into unconsciousness immediately after. The morning is only worse. Her head is actively trying to kill her, and her limbs refuse to cooperate. Every movement hurts as she slowly, clumsily climbs down the tree. But she has to keep going. Her only hope is to find water

Another option occurs to her, and she could hit herself for not considering it sooner. If she had the strength. 

_Hannes._ He can send her water. The sponsors have surely given enough to send her one measly glass of water. As loudly as she can manage, Mikasa says, “Water,” and waits. 

And waits.

And . . . nothing. 

_. . . Why_ is there nothing? She has enough sponsors, she’s sure of it! Or . . . did she lose them all when Eren . . . 

Horror washes over her. Was _that_ Eren’s goal? Sabotage? He shifts all the interest in her into interest into their non-existent love story, and then strips that away, leaving her out to dry while he rubs elbows with the Careers?

No. Even if Eren ruined the star-crossed-lovers angle—that was his deal. She’s still Levi Ackerman’s sister, the girl on fire, the girl who got an eleven. She _knows_ she has sponsors. Enough for this, at least. 

So _why_ isn’t Hannes sending her water? He wouldn’t just let her die. He wouldn’t do that to her. Not to any one of his tributes, but especially not to _her._ He’s known her since she was born. He always pays too much for game. He’s always been good to her. He likes her, so . . .

So the reason he’s not sending any water must be because he thinks she can find it on her own. 

_Okay,_ she thinks. _Okay._

Mikasa grits her teeth and stands. 

The hike is the worst misery of her life. She couldn’t say how long she walked, only that each step is agony. She’s weaker than she’s ever been, even the rainy day when Eren threw her this scarf. Anyone could kill her now. Even little Louise. The thought of Louise makes her think of Izzy, so Mikasa presses on. She keeps a determined face and treks on. She’ll be strong. She’ll die marching, at least, on her feet—

Her feet—

Mikasa looks down at her feet and nearly cries out. She would have burst into tears if she could have.

She’s standing in a _pond._

The last scrap of her common sense, valiantly clinging on, reminds her that she can’t just put her face under the pond and swallow it. With shaking hands, she fishes out her water bottle and iodine. She fills the bottle with the pond water and adds the drops, waits the half-hour. She’s woozy by the time she takes her first mouthful, the world spinning around her in fast, dangerous arcs, but that sip is a miracle. 

She drinks slowly, minutes between each gulp, so that she won’t throw it all up and have to start again. Slowly but surely, over the course of the afternoon, Mikasa drinks the whole half-gallon of water. Then another. Downright cheerful by then, she fishes out her wire and rigs a few snares a couple of minutes away, before coming back to camouflage her bright orange backpack with the pond’s mud. She even partially undresses and bathes. With her jacket and underwear on she scrubs down her legs; with her pants and boots on, arms over her breasts, she washes her torso. She finally undoes her braid and combs through her hair with her fingers before rebraiding it poorly. It’s looser than Hanji’s and messier than Eren’s, but when she shakes her head it stays, and her hair feels much cleaner. 

When the sun begins to set, she checks her snares and gains two squirrels. With a smile, she blows a kiss vaguely upwards, certain the cameras will love it. She takes them back to her little camp, skins them and eats part of one raw with katniss tubers by the pond. It’s not the worst meal she’s ever had. 

She fills her water bottle again and climbs up a tree. Sleep comes easy for the right reasons tonight: she’s exhausted from exercise and her stomach is full. She tucks into the sleeping bag and belts herself in, snuggling into her scarf and clutching her full water bottle like a baby doll. The anthem of Paradis plays but no faces show in. With a shudder, Mikasa realizes that, had she not gotten lucky, her own face probably would have been up there right now. 

Wrapped in the scarf as she is, it’s hard not to wonder what Eren would have felt about that. 

With her head as clear as it’s been since the start of the Games, Mikasa finally tries to puzzle out Eren’s motives. Why in the world he’s with the Careers. Why he would invent a love story only to abandon it. Maybe he hasn’t? It seemed like they didn’t know what her strength is. They’d wondered if she was good with knives. So he hasn’t told them that she hunts with a bow. Why? Is he withholding that because they’re likely to kill him once they know? Is he deliberately misinforming them to keep up the act for the audience? But then, why is he helping them find her? Is he really helping them? Is this strange strategy what he meant when he said he didn’t want Mitras to force him to become something he isn’t?

She wishes she could just talk to him, find out what’s going on inside his head. The odds that they’ll ever be in a position to have a real conversation with him again are slim-to-none, but . . . still. She wishes. 

Hours later, Mikasa is shaken from a dream about the meadow back home by the rumbling of a thousand feet. She turns her head, confused, and then frantically undoes her belt and rolls out of the tree, falling twenty feet and landing in a heap, still inside her sleeping bag. She scrambles out and pulls it over her shoulder, desperately grateful that all her supplies are already inside. 

She’d have no time to pack before a wall of fire descends upon her.


	5. i turn to dust but you never stop trying

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from "Pure as the Driven Snow" by Suzanne Collins

Mikasa blindly follows the animals. They’ll know the area better than she does, and their instinct for fleeing the fire must be sharper. Mikasa allows her own instincts to take over. The fire in the trees has caught up with her, sending branches crashing down in explosions of sparks all around her. A thin tree collapses right in her path and Mikasa hurdles it, continuing to chase the rabbits and the deer that have begun to leave her behind. 

Even in her panic, which leaves very little room for real thought, she can tell that this fire is unnatural. It’s too hot, too uniform, too fast. The Gamemakers have caused this to flush her out— _girl on fire, ha, ha._ No one has died in two days, the audience must be getting bored. Surely the Gamemakers are herding her, and whoever else may be nearby, together.

While the fire, fast as it is, is still fifty feet behind her, the wind carried the smoke directly into Mikasa’s heaving lungs. She knows enough of fire to know that this is what’s most likely to kill her--the toxins will drop her and leave her body for the flames, so she pulls her scarf, already damp with sweat, out of her shirt and covers the lower half of her face with it. The fabric is thick and the knitting it tight; it serves as a decent barrier.

 _Thank you, Eren,_ she thinks, half-ironically. Really, she ought to be thanking Mrs. Jaeger. Really, she ought to be—dodging— _fuck!_

Out of nowhere, a ball of fire the size of a cabbage launches at her. Mikasa lunges out of the way just in time; the intense heat of it scalds without even a direct hit. Rolling back onto her feet, she continues running, now watching out for this new torture instead. 

Fireballs shoot out at her randomly, from every direction. The only warning she gets is a faint roar before she has to duck, dodge, dive. She operates entirely on instinct, no time for any hesitation. They explode when they hit the ground, intensifying the inferno around and behind her. One grazes her back and sets her jacket on fire; she has to rip it off and simply hit it against trees she passes until finally the flames die. She shoves it in her sleeping bag, praying it’s extinguished enough not to burn.

Mikasa runs, smoke clouding her vision, clouding her lungs, for what feels like years. She knows that if she can get out of the rigged section of the arena then she’ll escape death by fire. She’ll likely run into another tribute or six then, but that’s future Mikasa’s problem. 

When finally the attacks subside, the heat from the fire no longer present, she collapses to her knees and vomits. She retches up bile—her supper and precious water all already digested—so hard it forces tears from her eyes, and gasps in air that’s still too hazy to be called fresh. It’s not likely to kill her, at least. Her braid has slipped over her shoulder, and Mikasa realizes with a sort of faint, distant interest that most of it is charred. She carefully touches it, and eight inches of her hair simply crumble away, releasing the scent of fire.

 _Huh,_ she thinks. _Don’t need to braid it now._

Just as she begins to catch her breath, one final fireball hurls itself from a tree. On her knees, Mikasa can only throw herself on her side and roll, and it’s only enough to avoid being hit. The explosion grazes her left calf, setting the leg of her pants on fire. 

Once again seized by instinct, Mikasa continues to roll, frantically stamping her leg against the dirt. The flames go out, but the fabric is still smoldering, doing further damage to her calf; without thinking, she grabs the burning fabric and yanks it off. 

It’s a mistake. It was hot enough to damage her leg; it’s hot enough to hurt her hands. She screams— _stupid, stupid_ —and flings it aside, but she can already see little red welts rising on her fingers. Mikasa bites her scarf to muffle another scream. 

She needs to move, especially after announcing her location like that, but—it’s simply not an option. She’s trembling from vomiting; coughing from smoke inhalation, and woozy with pain. She can’t run. If anyone finds her, she’s done. 

_Okay._ She takes a deep breath. _Okay._

She’s rolled down a hill, which provides her some cover from the smoke hanging heavy in the air. When she moves, she’ll need to stick to the lowground. A quick glance up confirms that climbing a tree—even disregarding her injured hands—would be suicide: the smoke is still too thick. She still has her supplies; while dirty, the sleeping bag doesn’t have a scratch. She loves this thing. 

Carefully, so carefully, Mikasa opens the bag. The pain in her hands isn’t so bad, particularly in her left, so she’s able to slowly pull out the backpack and water bottle. She sips a teaspoon’s worth of water to wash out her mouth, spitting out the cloying taste of smoke, and then carefully takes a few small sips. Now that she has to find a new water source, she has to conserve it again. The last thing she needs is to vomit any up. 

She awkwardly rolls her bag up and stuffs it into the backpack. Allows herself for the first time to break into her beef jerky and crackers. The crackers are fine: salty and buttery, and in this moment, they’re the most delicious thing in the world. 

As the sun rises, Mikasa forces herself to stand. The smoke has dispersed some, and the daylight improves visibility some. She can’t see more than fifty feet in any direction; but it works in her favor. She fears the Career pack the most, and the six of them will be much louder and more visible than her alone. With her scarf over her nose, she’s able to stumble her way downhill. She feels _awful,_ the vivid pain in her hands and her calf like biting snakes burrowing into her. She’s still coughing, trying desperately to muffle them with the scarf, when, blessedly, she nearly trips into a little pool. 

She laughs—it sounds more like a hideous gargle—and collapses down on the edge. The water, bubbling up from a spring in the rocks, is freezing. For her limited experience with burns, she knows that cold water is supposed to be the first step in treatment. She dips her right hand in and presses her lips together to suppress a relieved whimper. With her better-off left hand, she fishes her water bottle out of the pack and gulps as much of it down as she’s comfortable with, then refills it and adds the iodine drops. 

She sits there, hands laying on the surface of the water, for a few minutes, mustering up the courage to look at her calf. While she can skin and butcher her kills all day long, something about injuries on a living thing—especially a person—unnerve her. Especially burns, given that an explosion killed her brother. When finally she looks, she nearly vomits again. 

It’s _horrible._ Bright red and blistered, the burned area covers a rough rectangle just bigger than her hand. It still feels like it’s on fire, and the sight hasn’t made Mikasa feel any better, but she forces her face to remain impassive. Sponsors aren’t moved by pity; they’re moved by strength. 

Swallowing, she removes her boot and her sock and swings her knee into the water. It brings instant relief. The water draws the heat out, which she thinks reduces chances of fever. But she really has no idea. _She’s_ not the doctor’s child. Eren must know all about treating burns, she thinks bitterly. In Shiganshina, they’re the most common type of injury, since life revolves around coal and the burning thereof. If the Career pack was caught up in this, she’s sure they’re in _great_ hands. 

Mikasa thinks. She’s not Doctor Jaeger’s apprentice . . . but she _is_ his supplier for a lot of wild herbs, whenever the meager garden that he’s permitted to keep runs dry, or he needs something rarer. She knows there are some herbs that are used to treat burns, but she wouldn’t know where to find them in the arena. 

As her leg soaks, she prepares herself. She begins to rehydrate, refilling the bottle and treating the water every time it becomes only half-full. She finally finishes off her bread with some of the raw squirrel—she considers trying to cook it on her fever-hot calf and then wonders what’s wrong with her—before stuffing everything back into her bag and pulling over her shoulders. She splashes water on her face and her arms to scrub off grit; dunks her head under and wrings out her hair to get rid of any remaining chard bits. When she runs her fingers through her hair, she finds it now hangs unevenly just below her chin. She’s never had short hair before. It’s just not what girls do in Shiganshina, but some girls in the interior districts and Mitras do, so hopefully it won’t lose her any sponsors. Speaking of Mitras fashions, her jacket is so badly burned that she has to cut it off at the ribs. Finally, she pulls her leg out of the water, which immediately redoubles the pain, and puts her sock and boot back on before stretching it back out and tilting so that the burn alone is touching the water. With that she leans back and rests, ready to run. 

And it’s a good thing she is. Hours later, the smoke mostly cleared away, Mikasa snaps out of her lazy half-nap to the sound of boots crashing through the woods. Her body snaps to attention and she’s up and running in a moment, darting back into the woods. She’s slowed down by the pain in her legs and her abused lungs, but she has a minute or so’s head start and the Career pack has not made it through the fire unscathed, either. They cough loudly as they chase her— _they_ didn’t have the benefit of Carla Jaeger’s superior knitting. 

_Suck on that, Eren._

Still, she knows she won’t be able to outrun them. She runs until she finds a decent tree--knobs for hand-and-footholds for the first twenty feet and slim branches higher up--and begins to climb. Running was horrible and climbing is worse, but by the time the Career pack has caught up to her, she’s twenty-five feet in the air. 

There’s a tense, somewhat awkward pause as they stare at each other. Not one of them makes a move to climb the tree yet, instead they simply congratulate each other and jeer up at her. All except Eren, who avoids looking at her completely. 

She resists the urge to stick her tongue out at him. Then, she remembers that the personality she’s been branded with includes the phrase “baby sister,” recalls the countless times that Izzy stuck her tongue out at things she didn’t like, and does exactly that. 

The pack snarls, but Mikasa’s sure the audience watching loves it. 

Floch, with his stupid, _stupid_ fucking haircut, snarls, calls her a bitch, and begins to climb. Mikasa rolls her eyes and scrambles higher. He’s taller than her and probably twice as heavy, and she saw him at the climbing center in training. She hears a thump before she even gets ten feet higher. Suppressing another eye roll and biting back a grimace, Mikasa continues to pull herself up until she’s at least seventy feet in the air. Then she settles down on a sturdy branch, dangles her feet casually, and watches them. Just as the audience must be watching her.

She looks down just in time to watch Annie drop back to the ground, abandoning an attempt to climb up. Mikasa was right the other day: she’s lighter than all of them, and can make it much farther up. 

Their conversation is loud enough to drift up to her, so when Marcel suggests breaking out the bow, she hears it and immediately tenses. Sure enough, there, on _fucking Floch’s_ back, is the silver bow and quiver of arrows. Mikasa is so angry that he, of all people, has them. 

She’s mollified, though, when it becomes clear that none of them are competent with a bow. Every shot they take misses wildly. By pure luck, one manages to lodge a few feet from her. She takes it and tosses it back to them. “Maybe you should try throwing the swords,” she calls down. 

They grumble and snarl about that, furious that she’s untouchable and unruffled, until, just like last time, Eren shouts above them all. Harshly, his voice roughened by smoke inhalation, he says, “Just fucking leave her there! It’s not like she’s going anywhere; we can get her when we’re not still sick from the smoke.”

“. . . Fine, Love Doctor,” Marcel snaps. 

She’s pretty sure that Eren grumbles a protest against that name, but no one argues. Because he’s right. Mikasa’s going nowhere. 

Separated by less than a hundred feet, Mikasa and the Career pack separately prepare for bed. She’s completely exhausted and still weak from pain. All the relief the pool gave is gone now, and she’s left alone with her meager supplies and some kids she once broke bread with who are now trying to kill her. 

For all that she’s missed her family, suddenly she misses Historia so intensely it hurts.

She tilts her head back, determined not to cry, and instead breaks into a smile at an unexpected sight. A mockingjay has landed on a nearby branch, and is staring at her with its little crested head cocked. 

She’s always loved mockingjays. They’re smart little birds—the hybrid offspring between genetically engineered jabberjays, failed spies from the revolution, and wild mockingbirds. While jabberjays could mimic human speech, intended for recording rebels’ plans, their descendants can only roughly mimic human voices. But they can learn songs. Not just notes, but entire songs, with varied verses and all. 

Levi had always claimed he didn’t like animals, but he used to teach the mockingjays mining songs. She thinks his mother had liked them— the birds as well as the songs. And the mockingjays had loved him. They didn’t listen to just anyone, but Levi had a lovely, strong voice, and he always sang when they were in the woods together. 

The bird in the branch sings five long notes to her. Mikasa, distracted from her pain, quietly hums them back. 

It straightens its little head and sings a different tune back; she repeats it. It hops, excited, and Mikasa makes the first move this time, quietly singing the first verse of an old lullaby: 

_“Like the scarlet night, veiling the dark,  
You can hide your fear,  
Can lie, my dear,  
Continue to dream,  
Spread your bloodstained wings.”_

Her mother used to sing it for her. It’s an ominous song when she thinks about the lyrics, but the tune is sweet and the bird seems to like it. It sings it back to her twice, and then flies away, still singing. The sun has begun to set: it’s heading back to its nest for the night. Maybe it has a mate to get back to, and chicks. Maybe it will teach them her lullaby. The thought is comforting. 

As the sun sets, it gets cold fast. She crawls into her sleeping bag and cuts a slash in it to dangle her burning calf out of. It screams with pain, as do her hands, but letting the cold air take away the heat is all she can do.

The forest comes alive as twilight sets in. Owls hoot, bats shriek. She watches with some amusement as a skunk wanders past the Careers’ camp and Reiner gently shoos it away. When she looks back up, animal eyes watch her from the next tree over

She blinks. Sits up. Those aren’t animal eyes. 

It’s _Louise._ The little girl was probably here the whole time, silent and unnoticed as the Careers targeted her. Clever thing. Mikasa chances a smile at the girl; she waves back timidly, and then points at something above Mikasa’s head and disappears back into the foliage.

Mikasa follows the path of Louise’s tiny finger and has to choke back a scream.

There, twenty feet above, is a wasps’ nest the size of Mikasa’s torso. It’s nearly silent, and she realizes that the smoke must have put them to sleep. It’s probably the only reason they haven’t killed her. 

Because that’s no ordinary wasps’ nest. Even in the last bit of daylight, Mikasa can tell that it’s sold black, and shaped far too uniformly to be natural. 

That’s a tracker jacker nest. 

She gulps. Like jabberjays, tracker jackers were genetically engineered by Mitras for the war. Not for reconnaissance. These wasps, the size of a man’s thumb, are highly aggressive and highly dangerous. Their stings swell up to the size of plums, and their venom causes extreme hallucinations. In school, they taught that they could drive a person to insanity. More than five or six stings are almost always fatal. And they’re _vicious,_ too. They “track” down anyone who disturbs their nest and sting them to death. 

. . . Mikasa gets an idea. 

It’s a bad one, but it’s the only chance she’s got.

Gritting her teeth, careful to be absolutely silent, Mikasa crawls out of her sleeping bag. She climbs up to the nest. It dangles about ten feet away from the trunk on a branch about as thick as her fist. It’s very nearly a clean drop down to the ground. Her knife can certainly handle it. Her hands . . . will have to. She’ll bite her scarf and bear it. 

Mikasa is going to send the nest down to her friends. 

She decides to wait until the anthem plays, so that the sound of her sawing (and likely the swarm stirring) will be drowned out. She doesn’t wait long. When the opening notes blast, Mikasa steadies the branch with one hand and begins to saw. She does, in fact, bite her scarf to muffle her whimpers of pain. The blisters on her hands burst. The anthem plays—no faces in the sky tonight. It ends before she can cut all the way through, and she accepts that that’s probably for the best. It’s full dark now, and while she could cut the rest of the way through in the dark, she might put her hands completely out of commission, the branch might snag on the way down, the tracker jackers might still be too sleepy to actually attack. She’ll finish sawing at dawn. 

She lets her hands rest for a few minutes before climbing back down, only to discover the best surprise of her life. A small white parachute rests on her sleeping bag, tied to a small pot. Her first sponsor gift. 

With throbbing fingers she unscrews the lid, and is greeted with the artificially sweet smell of _medicine._ Giddy, she pokes a finger into it and the pain evaporates. Like magic. With shaky laugh, she slathers the ointment on her palms and on her calf. In just a few seconds, she feels _miles_ better. “Thank you,” she says to the sky, to Hannes, to her sponsors. It must have cost a fortune, pooling together multiple donations. 

With her pain gone, Mikasa barely crawls back into her sleeping bag before passing out. 

She’s woken just before dawn by her mockingjay singing to her from the end of her branch. She gives it a little grin. She feels . . . okay. Her lungs still feel a little raw and her calf is still swollen and red, but her hands are nearly completely healed. She finishes the remaining squirrel before it can go bad and washes it down with water. She applies a second coating of the ointment, packs everything up, pulls her backpack over her shoulders. A quick look down shows that everyone is asleep. A girl—she can’t tell who in the low light—is propped against the tree, with the bow in her hand, suggesting she’s supposed to be keeping watch. All the better for her. 

She looks at the tree where little Louise was last night. She warned her, it’s only fair that Mikasa warns her back. She hisses “Louise,” as loudly as she can bring herself to. 

In an instant, the little girl appears from between the branches, her hazel eyes reflecting the gray light of dawn. Mikasa points to the nest and makes a sawing motion; Louise nods and disappears. She hears a rustling a few seconds later, and then another—Louise is leaping from tree to tree. 

Mikasa smiles. Clever girl. No wonder she got a seven. 

When she gets to the nest’s branch, she’s greeted with the sight of an enormous golden wasp crawling slowly up the branch. It’s still sluggish, but certainly awake enough to be dangerous. She’ll have to saw fast. Steeling herself, Mikasa preemptively bites her scarf and begins to saw in the groove. 

The vibration stirs the nest instantly. The tracker jacker on the branch buzzes into the air, flies in a wobbly line towards her. She moves the knife back and forth desperately. A horrible pain erupts in her knee, like she’s been shot. She has a fourth of an inch left. The hive buzzes louder and louder. Another tracker jacker stings her on the cheek. The branch begins to curve away. Shining gold emerges from every side of the nest. Her knife cuts through the last through fibers, and Mikasa pushes the end of the branch away from her.

One final tracker jacker lands on her, but it makes the mistake of trying to sting her neck through Carla Jaeger’s fucking indestructable knitting, so it dies instantly. Mikasa bats the three shiny golden corpses off her and pulls out the stingers as she watches the nest crash down. There’s a moment where it gets caught on a lower branch that fills her with terror, but it tips over and crashes to the ground with a horrible _crack._

She watches with numb horror as a furious cloud of wasps rises, divides, and attacks. The Careers have woken up in a fresh hell. Some—Eren, Annie, Bertolt, Marcel, Floch, and Reiner— have the good sense to simply split. She hears Reiner shout, “To the lake, to the lake!” They must be close to it if they think they can get underwater before the tracker jackers will kill them. 

But others aren’t so fast. Two people are covered in golden bodies—one manages to get into the treeline before they drop, but Mikasa knows that they’ll be dead within minutes. The sleeping guard, who was closest to the nest when it exploded, is already convulsing on the ground, screaming and crying and uselessly flailing her arms. 

Clinging to her branch, Mikasa already feels a little woozy. She waits until all the tracker jackers seem to have either died or left in pursuit of other prey, then scrambles down and runs back to her pool and dives in, just to be sure. She keeps underwater for several minutes, only surfacing to breathe for a second at a time, until she’s positive that no tracker jackers are waiting for her. When she drags herself onto the rocks, she feels much worse. The sting on her knee is purple and has swollen to the size of her fist, and it’s leaking something dark green and foul. 

_God,_ she hates injuries. Her body should _not_ be able to produce something that color. That alone makes her stomach uneasy combined with the pain, and the horror of the dawning realizations that she just _killed two people_ . . . those girls are dead because of her. Soon, their cannons will go off, and their swollen, disfigured bodies will be collected . . . 

It hits her like a blow to the head. The girl has the bow and the arrows. The only bow in the arena. If it’s collected with her—

She can’t let that happen. She _needs_ that bow. 

Mikasa stumbles to her feet, the ground swooping under her, and sprints back to the tree. The area is empty of tracker jackers. A cannon fires just as she reaches the girl--

She has to choke back vomit. She isn’t recognizable as _human_ anymore. Her limbs have swollen to the size of tree branches, splitting the seams of her clothes. Her head, covered in burst stings, resembles a misshapen watermelon more than a girl. The smell is horrible--like rotting meat, rotting vegetables, just death and death and death. What used to be her fingers are clenched around the bow, and the quiver of arrows is trapped under her back. She can’t pry the girl’s fingers off it. She picks up a rock and smashes them off, horrible green ooze splashing over her. Mikasa is hyperventilating at this point, between the venom and the surreal horror of the situation, of the girl, of what she did to her. She’s able to roll her over and wrestle the quiver off of her back, but then she just sits there next to her body. Ants crawl out of her burst stings, her split seams; scuttle down and part around her like a river. Mikasa’s hair, hanging around her chin, begins to pour out like inky waterfalls, streaming to the ground to drown the little ants. 

She understands that she’s begun to hallucinate, but she can’t do anything about that. Footsteps crash through the trees and she’s genuinely surprised. She didn’t think they’d come back. But they must have had the same idea that she did, about—robbing from corpses. She pulls the quiver over her back and tries to notch an arrow, but her bowstring is red like her scarf, but it’s blood, and it gets all over her fingers, running down her hands, and she can’t touch it, she can’t, she can’t, she can’t. 

Eren is first through the woods, a short sword in his hand. When he sees her, his face runs through various stages of surprise, fear, and anger. He marches over and grabs her shoulders. Mikasa can’t even do anything. He’s sparkling, dripping sun-drops all over. 

_“The_ fuck _are you still doing here?”_ he roars. Furious, Eren hauls her up, picking her up like a child and setting her on her feet. “Run!” he commands. He shoves her hard, making her stumble. “Mikasa, _get the hell out of here._ Run!” Behind him, Marcel appears, sparkling as well, a nasty sting under his eye, and his sword is a blazing bolt of lightning.

Eren’s push unsticks her feet, and Mikasa turns around and does as he bid. She hears Eren’s war cry and Marcel’s answer, she hears steel on steel; doesn’t turn around. She runs, or she falls, or she flies. She trips and stumbles, crashing into trees. She runs past her pool into strange woods. The trees melt and splash down around her feet. They leap out in front of her and claw at her with thorny hands. Mockingjays twirl around her, screaming, shattering into stars. The tails of her scarf stretch out to the horizon and drag her forward. The ants are back, crawling all over her, pouring into her burned calf, into the sting on her knee, on her cheek. They climb into her eyes, into her nose, into her mouth, and she falls into a pit full of black, rotting bellflowers that hum like the nest. 

Just before the flowers cram themselves into her mouth and suffocate her, Eren Jaeger’s blue-green eyes, narrowed with righteous fury, stare at her. The weight of the scarf around her neck is like a chain.


	6. for when the bell rings, lover, you're on your own

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eren's pov! I wrote this before 138--it was already pretty clear that Mikasa would be the one to kill Eren, but still. _fuck._
> 
> some slightly graphic depictions of gore, but if you've watched/read aot then you should be fine lol
> 
> Chapter title from "The Ballad of Lucy Gray Baird" by Suzanne Collins.

Eren crashes through the woods. The only reason he knows he didn’t leave his leg behind somewhere is whatever scrap of logic is clinging to the inside of his skull is telling him that he couldn’t run if it was gone. His nerves and the venom tell him that it’s fallen off upwards of four times, but he’s still running. 

He has to keep running. 

He’s sure he killed Marcel, and even if he didn’t, Marcel won’t be able to give chase with something like fifteen stab wounds. But the others will come eventually, and Eren knows that as soon as he stops running, he’ll stop for days. Minimum. He might stop forever. 

Tracker jacker venom kills. So does blood loss, and infection, and thirst and hunger, and he’s—poorly off. 

Eren had ripped out the stingers on the way back to the nest. He’d not yet told the others to, correctly predicting that their shaky alliance was coming to an end. He hadn’t expected Mikasa to _still fucking be there,_ but. That’s the way it was. He’d gotten her running and killed her hunter, so he’s done his job. 

She’s got the bow now, too, which. Super. There she goes. She’ll make it home. 

The world is spinning around him dangerously as he runs. He’s pretty sure that the giant butterflies and rain of blood and teeth aren’t real, either, just like the echoes of a lullaby sung in Mikasa’s voice. 

He crashes into a river, and then directly into a nightmare. Everything he fears most dances around in his head. He spends forever trapped in visions of his mother wasted away, his father’s bloodied body, his brother hanging from the gallows, Armin’s head caved in, Mikasa’s tiny body slumped over in the alleyway, not moving when his scarf lands beside her. The military police’s green unicorns trample through Shiganshina and spear everyone on their horns. A woman brings her son, burned nearly to death in a mine accident, to them, but it’s _Armin,_ and they don’t save him. The winter is hard, and it comes to—it ends badly, with blood and stringy meat caught in his teeth. He feels himself torn apart by wild animals like his aunt, he burns to death in that chariot next to Mikasa, watches as Mikasa is gutted by Marcel. By _him._ He strangles her with his scarf. Her grey eyes fade into death like he’s seen in a thousand patients, her pretty voice choking on gasps, crying out, spitting insults, and he can’t make himself stop, he tries and he tries but _he can’t make himself stop—_

—but when he wakes, for a disorientated minute, he could swear that she’s singing to him. He’s sure of it. Somewhere close by, Mikasa is humming that old lullaby. How many times had he imagined her singing it to their kid?

For a sweet, shining moment, his venom-rattled brain thinks that must be what’s happening. He’s just woken from a long, terrible nightmare, or been pulled from it by a crying baby, but she’s there singing their child to sleep and everything in the world is okay. 

When he cracks open his eyes, he realizes it’s just a mockingjay somewhere nearby. Right. She’d sung to one when they’d treed her. Maybe this is the same one; more likely that one had taught its friends. 

God, he fucking loves that girl. 

Eren grits his teeth and pushes up onto his elbows. He’s lying half in a riverbed, one foot submerged in the cold water, lightly dragged by the current. Blessedly, it’s not the leg that Marcel nearly cut off. His backpack is snagged on a big rock. It’s probably the only thing that’s kept him from being tugged into the river and drowning these past . . . he squints at the sky. The sun tells midmorning, but Eren knows he didn’t sleep off the tracker jacker venom in just a few hours. At least one day, maybe even two. His head throbs from dehydration and his stomach feels like it’s trying to digest itself. 

Well, he hasn’t bled to death yet. First thing first, then. He pulls out his water bottle, blessedly still full, and begins rehydrating. Then he eats half a pack of dried fruit and a few strips of some jerky he doesn’t bother to identify. 

His head and stomach feel better soon, but the awful ache in his right calf lets him know he’s far from fine. But he feels strong enough to push himself upright and swing out of the river, so that’s what he does.

Immediately he groans. The cut on his calf screams in protest, and it’s all he can do to bite his lip to keep from screaming as well. He’d tried to use the muscle— _bad idea, bad, bad, bad idea._

Shaking from the pain, Eren twists his torso to examine the back of his calf for the first time. 

Blood drains from his face at the sight. The cut that Marcel had inflicted as Eren climbed on top of him to stab _(and stab and stab and stab and)_ him is long enough to stretch from his shin to just under his knee (a miracle he didn’t go two inches further and tear Eren’s ligament) and deep enough that he sees bone. Even worse, he can already tell that it’s infected. Even if it hadn’t directly been in the river, water might have splashed in it. Or it could have gotten infected from simple exposure. The infection is in the early stages yet, but Eren has been learning at his father’s side for a long time. He can’t tell exactly how bad it is now, but as severe as the gash is, even a minor infection left unchecked could kill him.

The mockingjay sings again. There are no words, but still, it’s _Mikasa’s voice._

He shakes his head and roots through his backpack. 

The great thing about being a doctor’s son in the Hunger Games is that the Career kids had happily let him carry all the medical supplies that they bothered to take with them. There were crates of bandages and specific types of medicine back at the Cornucopia, but Eren had kept a well-stocked first aid kit with him wherever he went. He has bandages, rubbing alcohol, a needle and surgical thread, anti-inflammatory pills . . . he’s reasonably well-stocked. The only question is how bad the infection is. It’s already in him. He knows he won’t be able to walk for at least several days. For the foreseeable future, all he has to survive on is what’s on his back. 

Hands steady with years of experience, he pulls out the rubbing alcohol and a swath of bandage. Soap and water would be better at this point, but beggars can’t be choosers. He shucks off his jacket and bunches the sleeve in his mouth to muffle screams that he’s sure are coming. He wets the cloth with alcohol, braces himself, and begins to clean the wound. 

He nearly blacks out from the pain. People often do, when he or his father clean wounds, and Eren appreciates why for the first time. It’s a _dirty_ sort of pain, gritty and clawing, the alcohol burning at the wrecked flesh. The inside of his leg—something he never wanted to feel—is fever-hot and rubbery-smooth. 

The sun is at its zenith by the time the wound is cleaned to his satisfaction. He had fainted once, when his fingers grazed his own bone that was just—too much. He bandages it up and then spends a while just laying there, breathing. When he feels steady, he rifles through the pack and dry-swallows some of the anti-inflammatory pills. It might be too little too late, but he has no idea how strong these Mitras meds are. Maybe they’ll fix him up good as new. 

Probably not, though. 

It hits him like a punch in the gut. Eren wants to go _home._ He wants his dad to fix him and his mom to take care of him, he wants Zeke to play games with him and Armin to read him banned books while he sits in his own bed and recovers. He wants to help the people of Shiganshina with his father, he wants to help his mom with the laundry, he wants to play with Zeke’s baby goats, he wants to talk to Armin about every fool thought that crosses his mind. He misses his father’s unflappable calm as they treat the district’s dying, his pride when Eren makes a correct call, his laughter when Eren and Zeke get into a fight about illegal chess moves. He misses his mother’s cooking, her hugs, the way she tugs his ear. He misses how obnoxious Zeke is about fucking everything. He misses how Armin knows everything in general, and everything about him, specifically, the way he can read Eren like a book. 

From the moment they called his name, Eren knew he wasn’t coming home. Even if he’d had a chance, his survival would have come at the cost of Mikasa Ackerman’s own. And that wasn’t a price he was willing to pay. 

It’s not that he gave up. He still hasn’t, he’s still fighting to stay alive. But Mikasa has a family relying on her to keep them fed, she’s the tribute from Shiganshina that everyone is betting on anyway, and Eren has loved her for as long as he can remember. He wants her to go home and live a long, happy life. 

And now . . . he believes that she will. She got the bow. All she ever needed was that bow. Eren has eaten enough of her squirrels to know that. 

_I’m never gonna eat one of her squirrels again,_ he realizes. For some reason, such a specific reminder of everything he’s lost—everything he will never have—makes him want to cry so badly that he has to dig his fingers into the meat of his hand. The new, comparatively mild pain, is enough of a distraction to halt any tears. 

Eren refuses to cry for these people. He’s already done things he never wanted to. While he can’t regret them, not when he knows that he saved Mikasa, he hates that he had to. He hates fucking Mitras and every single person in there. He hates them for living so well when every day he and his father would treat people dying from starvation. He hates them for killing his aunt when she was just a little girl. He hates them for trying to take away another little girl, for forcing Mikasa to take the place of her niece. He hates them for stealing his future. 

He won’t let them see him cry. 

Exhausted and miserable, Eren drifts off to sleep.

***

The first words Eren ever says to Mikasa Ackerman are, after eleven years of existing in each other’s peripheries, “Goodnight, Mikasa,” and she doesn’t even respond. Just ducks her head into his old scarf and leaves.

Disappointing, but not shocking. He swallows. They’re enemies now, and isn’t that a fucking joke. 

Well, he’s never gonna hurt Mikasa. No force on the planet, certainly not _fucking Mitras,_ would ever be enough to make him hurt her. They don’t get to control him like that. He’s not about to go back on eleven years’ worth of love for them.

The next morning, Mikasa is already sitting at the breakfast table as he drags Hannes through the door. She blinks and goes wide-eyed, scooting away as Eren manhandles their mentor towards the table. She’s wearing a simple dress nearly the same color pink as that sweater she had when they were kids, the one her niece was wearing yesterday, and his scarf over it. She’s so pretty it makes his heart lurch. 

Eren dumps Hannes into a chair. 

“Little shit shoved me in the shower! Dragged me out of bed!” Hannes howls. 

It had been a goddamn ordeal, too. Hannes is fat. “You have a job to do,” he snaps. “You’re supposed to be mentoring us!”

He blows a pathetic raspberry. “Mentoring? I don’t know what either of you could learn from me. Young Doctor Jaeger, Little Miss Ackerman.” He nods towards Mikasa. “Ask that one, ‘m sure her brother had plenty to say.”

Mikasa raises her eyebrows. “Well, my brother is dead, so.”

“Alright, alright. You want my advice? Stay alive!” Hannes reaches for a bottle, and Eren loses his temper. He punches him in the jaw; at exactly the same time, Mikasa slams a butter knife into the table between his fingers. Hannes topples out of the chair, and Eren stands above him, furious. 

“See, Mikasa and I aren’t particularly in a joking mood, right now,” he snarls.

Hannes grabs Eren’s knee and jerks him down, flipping and pinning him. Hannes might be heavier, but Eren is sixteen years old and wrestles something like fifteen hours a week. He kicks him off quickly; to his surprise, Mikasa grabs his wrist and yanks him out of Hannes’s reach faster than the man can even respond. Eren stands up next to her and they glare down at Hannes.

After Hannes briefly appraises their skills, promises to not be wasted the entire time, and gives the barest instructions possible, he leaves. Eren supposes that’s the best they’re really going to get out of him. 

Still stewing, he asks, “Has he always been like this?”

The first words Mikasa Ackerman ever says to him are, “I think he’s gotten worse since Levi died. But maybe he just made more of an effort to hide it when I was a kid.”

Breakfast is superb, and Eren aggressively stuffs his face. He watches the countryside fly past in front of him. Beside him, Mikasa smells like the bakery. Better than. Sugar and vanilla. The sunlight shines in her hair the same way it did on the very first day of school. He’s not sure that she’s aware of it, but she keeps twirling the fringe of his scarf around her finger. It’s a nervous gesture she picked up somewhere around sixth grade. Eren isn’t sure if it’s creepy that he knows that. His heartbeat races under his skin, overwhelmed by her sheer proximity.

By the time she retreats to the back of the train, he’s come to a decision. It’s the only one he knows he won’t regret. Because he knows that if he lives and she doesn’t, he’ll regret it for the rest of his life. He won’t regret saving her life. How could he? He takes a deep breath and heads back to Hannes’s room.

The door opens when he presses it. Eren pokes his head in, deeply afraid that he might happen upon a naked Hannes. “Hey!” he yells. “Old man! I want to talk to you.”

Hannes steps out of the adjacent bathroom, dressed in slacks and a blue button up shirt. “Oh jeez, kid. _What?_ Is the shower not enough for you?”

Eren bites the side of his tongue. “I just needed to tell you something.”

Hannes looks alarmed. “Alright, kiddo.”

“Listen,” he says. “I won’t kill Mikasa. So. If there’s a choice between who to save. Pick her.”

Hannes squints. “The fuck kind of ass-backwards strategy is this?”

Eren scratches the back of his neck. “It’s not a strategy. I’m just telling you—“ he breaks off, unsure how to continue. 

“Well fuck me running, kid, this is a first. What possessed you to say that? Got a crush on her or something?”

He feels his face heat. It sounds so stupid when Hannes says it like that. It takes the fire in his heart that she keeps, the way the thought of Mikasa Ackerman fills him with strength and the sight of her fills him with warmth, the way the sound of her voice makes him feel _happy_ like very few things do, the way it still knocks him out every time he sees her in his old scarf, and makes it all sound so trivial. Like Eren doesn’t understand what he’s doing when he pleads for her life instead of his own.

“Shit, you do,” Hannes realizes. The stupid smile drops from his face. “Kid, this isn’t the schoolyard. You don’t want to let yourself die for a pretty face—“

“I _realize that._ I’ve been in love with her since I was _five goddamn years old,”_ he grits out. “This isn’t some passing thing.”

Eyes wide, their mentor lets out a low whistle. “That is . . . a long time to carry a torch for that girl.”

He shrugs tightly, uncomfortable. “What can I say. I’m stubborn like that. Can you do that or not?”

“To be frank, I was already planning on that. A bit.” He has the grace to look embarrassed as he says it. “I’ve known her since she was a baby. She’s Levi’s little girl. She volunteered to protect her niece. She’s the one people are looking at already.”

“Great. Good to hear.” Good to know he’d already been written off. That he’d confessed his feelings for Mikasa to anyone for the first time since fucking kindergarten only to be dismissed and then, hey, told he’s already been left for dead. “Well, if that’s settled—”

“Wait a second,” Hannes says. “Jaeger, wait! Are you serious about that?”

His jaw works. “Why the fuck would I lie about that?”

The old Shiganshina Victor looks more serious than Eren has ever seen him. “Jaeger,” he says. “That’s a game-changer. If people knew that . . . the people of Mitras will eat it right up. You two would be up to your ears in sponsors.”

“Well it’s a shame nobody will find my diary,” he snarks. “What do you mean ‘if people knew?’ I’m not about to confess to her on public television right before we’re shipped off to kill each other.”

“But consider this,” Hannes says. “What if you did exactly that?”

_“The fuck?!”_

***

Something yanks Eren out of his nap, and immediately a wave of dizziness knocks him back down. A pair of birds fly overhead, spooked from their perch. Eren grabs for the short sword, like it’ll do him any good, but after several minutes he accepts that whatever woke him up, it’s nothing to do with him. A cannon goes off a short while later, but Eren has faith that Mikasa is fine. He has to.

He feels no better than when he woke up earlier today. His leg still throbs with every heartbeat, but he needs to give it twenty-four hours before he checks the bandages. He forces himself to drink water, but since he’s not hungry he doesn’t bother to eat. 

He looks around at his situation. Aside from his medical supplies, all he has is a bottle of iodine, a couple bags of dried fruit and nuts, some jerky, and a long sleeve of crackers. He’s never starved, not like most of Shiganshina, but medical supplies are expensive and winters are cold, so Eren has been hungry. What’s in his pack will keep him fed for a while. But he’s wounded and battling an infection. He needs as much energy as he can get.

Eren looks at the river. There are fish in there, probably. If he could find a way to get them . . .

He twirls the sword, then eyes a long, thin tree branch a few feet from him. Propping himself up, Eren pushes himself up the riverbank awkwardly. He finds he can use his left leg, but even the slightest jolt to his right calf is agony. He won’t dare try using the muscle for at least another few days. He snatches the branch and brings the blade to one end. Sharpening it into a spear makes him feel productive, at least. The simple back and forth motion is soothing. 

Between the lingering tiredness, the warmth of the sun, and the repetitive motion, Eren’s mind wanders back to the other time he has used this sword.

***

The girl from Karanes (he thinks) isn’t dead yet. “Hey,” he says, surprised. “So you are alive.”

She gasps weakly. _“Please . . .”_ she says. 

Eren winces. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry.” He kneels down next to her. The girl never had any weapons, and she’s too weak to do anything to him now. Her eyes go wide as he pats her forehead awkwardly. He’s offering her as much comfort as he can, which is probably exactly none, since he’s going to kill her. “I don’t have a choice,” he says. “You get it, right? I have to protect the girl I love.”

She flails feebly and Eren takes pity on her. He cuts her throat the rest of the way, severing her carotid artery with a small spray of blood. The light fades from her eyes before he even puts the blade to his sleeve to wipe it off. 

Eren stands, wiping the blood off onto his jacket, and leaves her body there for collection. 

He just killed a defenseless girl. She makes the second person that he has knowingly, intentionally killed today. He’s supposed to be a doctor, to do no harm. He should probably feel something right now. All he can scrounge up is pity. The girl he’d killed this morning didn’t even get that—he’s just annoyed at him for getting in a good scrape on his chest. No regret, no quasiness, no torment. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism. Maybe he just genuinely doesn’t care.

He doesn’t. He knows that. As far as he’s concerned, everyone else in this arena is at best a walking corpse and elsewise a monster to be slain. Various classes of obstacles in the way of Mikasa Ackerman making it back to Shiganshina alive. 

He catches back up with the Career pack. He hates every single one of them for being the way they are: bloodthirsty lapdogs for Mitras, born into privilege and never knowing suffering the way the rest of the districts did. Even when Reiner insisted they break for supper and told stories of the fields of Trost. Even when Annie calmly kicks his ass for trying to keep the mood up. Even when Bertolt hovers over Annie’s smaller body and Eren can only think of himself and Mikasa. Neither girl needs their protection, but they have it nonetheless. They can only hope it will do them some good. 

He wonders what Armin and Zeke and his parents are thinking. He’d thrown in the last bit of his words to the dead girl for the cameras, to make it abundantly clear that he’s betraying the pack with the intention of protecting Mikasa. So the audience knows, now, what his angle is. He’s sure his family had known from the beginning. 

His mom had asked him to stay alive, but he . . . he thinks she’d understood. Zeke and his father’s goodbyes had been just that. Goodbyes. And Armin—Armin, who knows him best, who was the only one to get the full rant about why Mikasa Ackerman means so much to him—Armin certainly never expected anything different. 

He wonders what _Mikasa_ would think about all of this, if she knew what he was doing. 

That’s an exercise in self-flagellation, though. If she knows that he loves her—and he’s not a hundred percent sure she understands that he’d been telling the truth for his interview; hadn’t bothered with the absolute pointless torture that clarifying that would have been—then what exactly is she supposed to feel about it? If there was ever any chance that his feelings would have brought her joy, this situation has completely killed it. 

It’s so fucking depressing. Eren has planned to marry this girl since he was five years old, and now the best he can hope for is that she’ll be sad when he dies. 

. . . She _does_ know that he’d meant it, right? He’d told her on the rooftop that his goal in this arena was to die as himself. Does she understand that _as himself_ meant _for her?_

On the riverbank, Eren swallows and shakes his head, continuing to whittle away at the stick. If she hadn’t gotten it then, he’s sure that she’d understood when he’d saved her. 

His memory of the time between the nest dropping and passing out in the river are hazy at best. He remembers watching the nest make its way down the tree—remembers realizing exactly three seconds before it hit the ground vaguely what it was. Those extra seconds had allowed him to shoot out of his sleeping bag, grab his backpack, and begin to run. The mad dash to the lake, the horrible pain of the three stings he’d gotten. Annie, Bertolt, Marcel, Floch, and Reiner had made it back to the lake with him; only Marcel had been lucid enough after the tracker jackers left to go with him back to retrieve their shit. Maybe it had just been the paranoia from the stings setting in, but something had told him that he was going to have to fight. And he’d been right, because Mikasa had _still been there._

The sight of her kneeling, dazed, over Sandra’s body, the bow and quiver loosely in her hands, had filled him with a fire that was purely rage. He couldn’t believe she was still there, instead of somewhere safe. 

“The _fuck_ are you still doing here?” he shouted, grabbing her by her shoulders and setting her on her feet. She was too light. Her hair was dripping to the ground in slow glops as they stared at each other. The knot of his scarf around her throat was pulsing like a beating heart. “Run,” he barked, harsh. “Mikasa, _get the hell out of here._ Run!”

She looked blankly at him and he heard crashing. Marcel had caught up. Eren pushed her away and behind him, and she finally seemed to get the idea and took off. Marcel said, “I knew we couldn’t trust you,” and drew his sword. Eren wasted no time. He screamed and charged, aware that he was probably about to die and furious about it.

It was a brief, ugly fight, made uglier by the wild hallucinations both of them were battling. Eren screamed and screamed. They crashed against trees, and the trees exploded into gouts of steam, and their swords sent up sparks. Marcel was better, but he was succumbing fast to the venom. Finally, Eren knocked the sword right out of his hand, tackled him to the ground. Only—the sword didn’t leave his hand, and as Eren straddled him and _stabbed_ and _stabbed_ and _stabbed_ and _stabbed,_ possessed by animal instinct and anger, Marcel managed to slice it along the back of his calf.

Who knew why he’d gone for his leg instead of his back or his neck. Probably something to do with the hallucinations. Maybe that’s all his arm had been able to do. Eren’s pretty sure he’d stabbed him in the shoulder once or twice by then. Might’ve severed a muscle. Whatever the reason, it hadn’t been an immediately fatal or even incapacitating wound, and Eren had had enough sense to run off in a different direction than Mikasa. 

He tosses his sword down. The makeshift spear is good enough. 

Stabbing at the passing fish is almost completely useless, but it’s something other than pain to contend with the boredom, at least. By dark, he’s managed to get exactly one. He’s pretty proud of himself, until he realizes he has no way to cook it and eating raw fish straight from the river is a bad idea. 

Whatever. He’s not hungry anyway. 

The anthem plays, showing two faces, and neither one is Mikasa’s. Eren lets himself sigh out loud.

With that to give him comfort, Eren takes another anti-inflammatory pill and slips into fitful sleep. It’s freezing cold at night, he hurts nearly everywhere, and his dreams are strange. He fights Marcel, but Marcel’s skin swells and turns to steel as the venom takes hold, and he grows so much taller than he really is. He runs through the woods, arrows of fire chase him down. He wakes up shivering and pulls a handful of grass over himself before nodding back off. Armin stands with his feet in the ocean but turns into a seagull, and then a mockingjay sits next to him, burning but calm. Mikasa, nine years old in her old white dress and pink cardigan, stands over him in the meadow back home, carrying charred, bloody rubble on her back while his scarf bleeds around her throat.

In the morning, he wakes up to like six vultures pecking at the fish he speared, and another two peering curiously at him. Eren yelps and shoos then off with his stick. The scatter easily enough, but all that’s left of his fish is bones. “Aaagh,” he says. 

It’s not like he was going to be able to eat it, but still. He’d worked hard for that fish. 

He feels worse. The pain in his leg has progressed from yesterday’s ache into a harsh, ripping sort of pain. His whole calf throbs with each heartbeat, and Eren can tell that it’s swollen against the bandages. He needs to give it a few more hours until he can undo the bandages, though. 

He flops back down on the riverbank. For a long, long time, he just lies there. The sun slowly climbs across the sky, warming the world. The river bubbles. He keeps his sword and his spear in either hand, though he doubts it would do him much good if anyone found him. He does have to wave off more birds a few times, and does so with black amusement. _I’m not dead yet,_ he thinks. _Wait patiently._

Who’s left, he wonders. Eleven people had died in the first twenty-four hours. Two of them had been his kills. He can’t remember either of their names. No one had died in the next four days. Then Mikasa had dropped the nest and killed Jana and Sandra and he’d killed Marcel, and there were the two boys who’d died yesterday. Assuming no one else died while he was unconscious, that left eight of them. Bertolt, Annie, Floch, Hitch, Reiner, the little girl from Trost that’d shadowed Mikasa in training (. . . what was it, Lucy?), himself, and Mikasa.

And Mikasa has the bow. 

She _has_ to be alive. She can’t have died when he was unconscious. She just can’t have. 

With a groan, Eren sits up. He rolls onto his side, wishing the front of his leg had been cut instead, and begins unwrapping it. His first thought is _oh, gross._ His second thought is _yikes._

The gash is worse, as he knew it would be. It’s swollen even more overnight, and it’s beginning to turn white.

Eren mutters, “Hurray,” and reaches for his backpack. The good news is that he has plenty of bandages, so he doesn’t have to worry about washing them. He washes the cut again, this time with just purified water and lets it air for awhile. The day gets hotter by the hour until Eren strips off his jacket and lies down on it. The rocks are uncomfortably hot. 

A lightbulb goes off. 

He gets his spear and spends an embarrassingly long time trying to nab another fish. When he finally gets one, he scales it as well as he can and then sets it on a flat stone and waits. 

As he waits to see if it will cook, Eren looks around at the rest of his surroundings. He’s got one last idea. It might be ridiculous, but it’s all he really can do to protect himself. 

He grabs a handful of mud from the edge of the bank and plops it on his pant leg. He smears it around, finds it satisfactory, and spends the next several hours repeating this process. He takes breaks: to rebandage his leg, fill and purify his water bottle, flip the fish occasionally, then to spear another when it’s clear that it is indeed cooking. The camouflaging process would almost be fun, if he weren’t so physically miserable. 

By dark, Eren is much more tired than he should be and has covered himself in a thick layer of mud. His clothes, his hands, his face, all of him. He even went the extra mile by scattering some pebbles and grass on himself. When he looks down at himself, he thinks he’s done a damn fine job. The vultures seem to agree, since they stop bothering him. 

He eats his fish. They’re not good, but they’re cooked protein, so he can’t complain. He eats two crackers to get the taste out of his mouth, and counts the day as well spent. 

The anthem plays. Mikasa is still alive. He goes to sleep.

Eren doesn’t wake in the morning. It’s sometime around noon when he finally blinks awake. He’s sweating to death under his camouflage and his head is throbbing. Fever, he thinks blankly. Obviously he has a fever. 

It takes him a long time to summon the strength to sit up and dig through his backpack. He takes a fever pill along with his anti-inflammatories. The effort it cost to sit up tells him that he won’t be changing his bandages today. Just as well, he guesses. It won’t be the end of the world to not clean the wound for one day, and maybe letting it rest will do it some good. 

His back hurts. His arms hurt. His cut feels like a million tiny knives are twirling around inside of it, and the pain makes him nauseous. Eren can’t bring himself to eat, let alone spear another fish. His head pounds in time with his calf.

He’s gonna die, he realizes. His father used to tell him _where there’s life there’s hope, but . . ._

He’s going to die here on this riverbank. He lost his chance at winning when he lost his mobility. No matter how long he keeps himself alive, how well-hidden he is, he won’t win. Mitras won’t let him win. His only chance is to outlast the rest of the competition, and that’s too boring for their goddamn television show. 

He wonders for a second if Hannes will send him anything, but—Eren specifically asked him not to, didn’t he? They both chose Mikasa. And Eren doesn’t regret that—he doubts all the money all the sponsors have sent since the start would be enough to buy him the kind of medicine he needs—but some fucking painkillers or something wouldn’t go to waste. 

His fevered brain produces a strange thought. If he’s going to die . . . he thinks he’d like Mikasa to be the one to do it. 

It feels like his heart is a rock when he thinks that. He _doesn’t_ want Mikasa to kill him. He wants Mikasa to marry him. He wants to inherit his father’s practice and save as many people as he can in his hometown, and for Mikasa Ackerman to be there beside him every day. But that’s not going to happen. 

He’s going to die. He doesn’t want to, but he will. Mikasa will be the one to go home. She’ll go back home and live a long, happy life. She’ll move back to the Victor’s Village and her family will be safe and happy. 

It feels like he’s grieving someone. Eren’s never actually lost anyone he loved, but he’s grown up with grief. Before he’d been born, his mother’s cousin had died in the Games, as had his father’s sister. His brother’s mother had died of pneumonia. When they were eight, Armin’s parents had been hanged. When he was fourteen, a girl in his class had been reaped. He’s been at enough deathbeds to know what families sound like as they’re torn apart. This, right now, feels like that. Like he’s grieving for himself. For a life he’s not gonna get to have. 

But if he’s not gonna get a life with her, a death with her is something, at least. He’d like to see something from home again. She’d be kind about it, he’s sure. Maybe she’d even cry. Some selfish part of him wants that, but he needs her to be happy almost as much as he needs her to be safe. If she’s not, then what was the goddamned point? 

If he’s grieving, he’s fluctuating between anger and depression every other second. But they’re both distant. He’s so fucking tired. Everything hurts. He can’t think clearly and he’s buried himself already. 

Eren laughs to himself, a little hysterically. _I’ve already buried myself._ Maybe Mikasa will give him a eulogy before she kills him. It’s a funeral in reverse. 

Somehow, that puts him in a good enough mood to have decent dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think going into this au I was thinking like, okay, i am gonna make eren suffer a little bit with the pining, because he's kind of got that coming for putting mikasa through all this. But now 138 is here and it's clear that Eren wants Mikasa just as much as (if not?? more than?????) she does? what the fuck. and now i feel a little bad.


	7. i chanced to see the break of day, the solitary child

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from "Lucy Gray" by William Wordsworth

The sound of a bird singing is what finally draws Mikasa awake. She’d been trapped in a horrible loop of nightmares—her family starving, Levi burning, a thousand terrible deaths for her and everyone she loved—for what felt like years. Judging by the dryness in her mouth and the position of the sun, it’s been about a day and a half. 

She twists around, slowly shaking life back into her limbs. She feels horrible. She’s dehydrated, again, but at least this time she has her water bottle. She’s on the brink of starving, again, her ribs almost as defined as they’d been in the months after Levi’s death. She’s bruised and scraped all over from crashing into trees. All of her skin hurts, but especially her burn and the stings on her cheek and knee. They’re much better than she was expecting, shrunk down to the size of . . . all that comes to mind is one of Sonny’s hairballs. 

She misses that cat. She misses everyone: Petra and Benny and Isabelle and Historia and Levi, most of all Levi, but wishing for them won’t keep her alive. 

With a groan, Mikasa pushes herself upright. From there, she realizes two great things. One: she’s under a honeysuckle bush. Nice. She grabs a flower and pulls out the stamen to get the nectar, then does that about ten more times between sips of water. Two: she has her bow.

_Oh,_ she has the bow. The bow, and a dozen arrows in the quiver. The string isn’t red, like she’d seen when she was hallucinating, but there is a fair amount of dried blood on it. Probably the girl’s—she’d had to break her fingers with a rock, she thinks. The memory of the attack makes her queasy. She’d had no other option, but that girl had deserved to die like that. And she doesn’t know if _any_ of them survived. Louise had gotten a decent head start, but everyone on the ground had been swarmed by the tracker jackers, and she’d only seen Eren and—

_Eren!_

How did it take her this long to remember Eren? He’d saved her life! Again. She’s sure of it. She’s been hallucinating wildly at that point, but she’s sure that Eren had hauled her up and forced her to start running. She even has some hazy vision of him charging at Marcel. Why? Had the alliance fallen apart? Or had he gone back on them to protect her? If so, _why?_ And why had he been with the Careers in the first place? Is Eren even still alive? He’d been stung at least once, she remembers a great lump under his ear, and if he’d really tried to fight Marcel . . .

Mikasa feels ill all over again. She buries her face in the scarf. It smells like sweat and smoke and dirt. After a few minutes, that’s what finally motivates her to move. She needs to find a new water source. She’d really like to be able to wash up. 

After applying more ointment to her burn, she gathers her stuff, bow in hand and quiver over her shoulder, and picks a direction. Hallucinating Mikasa left a very obvious trail as she ran through the woods, so sane Mikasa walks the opposite direction. If any of her enemies are still alive, they’re probably worse off than she is, maybe still trapped under the tracker jackers’ venom. 

She finds a rabbit just minutes into her walk and instinctively shoots it. Right through the eye. She smiles. 

Hiking is an ordeal, and it’s gotten hot in the arena. She shucks off her jacket and ties it around her waist, walking slowly. She’s still so achy that walking quickly is a challenge, but at least she’s perfectly silent. A stream appears before too long, and Mikasa decides now’s probably the best chance she’ll have to bathe. She strips to her underclothes, not comfortable enough to get naked while she’s probably on camera, and simply lies in the shallow water for a few minutes. The cool water feels amazing on her battered body, and the current peels off layers of grime. She scrubs at her skin, watching as dirt, blood, and ooze flake away. Her hair, so much shorter, takes less time to rinse and comb through. She washes her clothes in as well, gently rubs them until they’ve mostly returned to their original colors. She takes special care with the scarf. It might be all that’s left of Eren.

She wrings out her clothes and hangs them on low-hanging tree branches to dry. Feeling marginally better, her stomach growls and she eats a single cracker and strip of jerky. She’ll cook the rabbit tonight. 

Deeming her clothes to be dry enough, Mikasa dresses and walks uphill. By late afternoon, she’s shot a bird she thinks may be a wild turkey and found a perfect place to settle down. She prepares her kills and then a small fire. As soon as she sets the rabbit down on the top layer of sticks, she hears a twig snap. 

She’s heard a million twigs snap in the past few days, and she’s never stopped tensing into fight-or-flight. She grabs an arrow without thought, scanning the area. She nearly relents and credits the sound to a creature in a tree when, just peeking out from behind a tree trunk, Mikasa sees the shiny black toe of a small boot.

Mikasa relaxes and shakes her head. Clever, clever girl. She drops her arrow and says, “Come on out, now. I won’t hurt you.”

***

Louise eats her leg of the bird, which she called a groosling, with gusto. She’s even smaller than she was when she first came into the arena. Mikasa wouldn’t be surprised if this is the first meat that the little girl has had in a year.

Her heart pangs. “Take mine, too,” she offers. 

Louise looks up at her with wide eyes. “Oh no, that’s okay. Thank you though.”

“Come on,” Mikasa urges. “I like the breasts better anyway. And we’ve got the rest of the bird and the whole rabbit, too.” She presses the other drumstick into her hand. “Call it a thank you for taking care of me.”

Louise had produced some chewed up herbs that instantly made her tracker jacker stings feel better. She’d put them on her while Mikasa was asleep, as well, which was why they were so much better than she was expecting. 

“We have a lot of nests in the orchards,” Louise had explained shyly. “It’s a habit to carry them around, so when I found them . . .”

“That was definitely the right move,” Mikasa’d praised. “C’mere, let me get that burn.” She’d had a long burn on her forearm that was now lathered in Mikasa’s ointment. 

“You really don’t have to,” Louise says now, and Mikasa raises her eyebrows. 

“If you don’t want it,” she warns, “I’ll throw it on the ground.”

After a long moment, her big eyes flickering between the drumstick and Mikasa’s face, she nods and takes a bite. “There you go,” Mikasa says. 

Louise offers a pocketful of blackberries and a handful of edible roots, making their supper into quite the meal. While she’s sure that Hannes is bemoaning Mikasa allying with a tiny twelve-year-old, she knows it’s a good choice. Louise had helped her, she’s clever and resourceful, and she reminds Mikasa far too much of Izzy to just leave her alone here, cold and hungry and hunted.

“So how long was I asleep?” she asks.

Louise smacks her lips, licking up the grease from the bird. “A day and a half. You didn’t miss a whole lot. The boy from Yalkel and the girls from Utopia and Stohess all died after you dropped the nest. It’s been quiet since then.”

She sighs involuntarily. So Eren’s alive, then. That makes her glad.

“Okay. Come here, let’s see what we’re working with.” Mikasa turns her backpack upside down and shakes it, just to try and make Louise laugh. It works, and in turn the little girl produces from her own small backpack a little slingshot, some rocks, an extra pair of socks, and a waterskin. 

“It’s not much,” she says shyly. 

“You’ve made it work just fine,” Mikasa says. “You were right to run from the Cornucopia.” Instinctively, she pats the top of her head. 

They turn over Mikasa’s things, and Louise gasps when she sees the sunglasses that Mikasa hasn’t spared a thought for since first seeing them. 

“What?” she asks.

“These are for night-vision,” she says, awed. “Sometimes they pass them out to us when we’re gathering at night.”

“That’s right,” Mikasa recalls. “You’re from Trost, right? So you work in the orchards?” 

“Mmhm.”

“That must be how you fly around like a little bird.”

Louise preens. Eventually, Mikasa convinces her that they can divide up their supplies. She gives Louise half of her matches and the whole rabbit, and gets in return plenty of the leaves for her stings and a few roots. “It’s getting close to bedtime,” Mikasa says, eying the setting sun. “You’ve been sleeping in the trees, right?”

Louise nods. 

“Good. Come on, let’s find a tree big enough for both of us. You can share my sleeping bag, if you want.”

Her hazel eyes light up with delight, and Mikasa wants to tuck an arm around her. She must have been so cold at night. 

As they walk, the golden light of the setting sun glints off a pin fixed to Louise's jacket. Mikasa points it out. “What’s that?”

“Hm? Oh! It’s my token,” she says. “It’s supposed to be good luck. It’s a mockingjay, see?”

“It’s lovely,” she says. The little pin is a brass circle around a bird in flight, connected to the rim by just the tips of its wings and tail. 

“I love mockingjays,” she sighs. “We use them to signal quitting time, back home. Us up in the highest trees see the quitting flag first, so we call out, and the mockingjays spread it around. I have a few mockingjays that recognize me. They’re good companions, if they like you. As long as you’re not near their nests, but that’s only fair.”

“Yeah. Never mess with a mama’s babies,” Mikasa agrees. “I’ve always liked them, too.”

“They like _you,”_ Louise says. “The other day, one let you teach it a song. That’s how I knew I could trust you, you know. I’ve heard the song a few times since. It taught its friends.”

Mikasa smiles, tucks it into her scarf.

“And your token,” Louise pipes up. “It’s your scarf, right? Was it your brother’s?”

“Oh,” she says. Her fingers automatically bunch into the fabric. “Actually, um. Eren gave it to me. A long time ago.”

Louise’s eyes go huge. _“Really?_ That’s so _romantic!_ So you guys are really in love? Wait, I thought he said you two had never talked?”

Mikasa goes red. “We hadn’t, no. But—he gave it to me when we were kids. After my brother died. It was a really hard time for us.” Her fingers twist into the old wool. “. . . It was the kindest thing anyone ever did for me.”

The little girl wiggles with excitement. “What? No way! So do you love him too? Why didn’t you two team up?”

Mikasa shakes her head. “We . . .” She sighs through her nose, frustrated. “I don’t know. He saved me, after the tracker jackers. I . . . he . . . he got me up and running, and I’m pretty sure he killed Marcel.” She twists her fingers into the fringe. “I don’t know what he’s doing,” she admits. 

Louise sighs. “I bet he was protecting you. That’s so romantic. He must really really love you.”

More likely it was just helping sell the whole Lover Boy angle. Maybe. God, what is Eren Jaeger _doing?_ She has no idea. 

“Come on,” she says. “It’s time for bed. This tree will work.”

They climb up and find a comfortable fork big enough for both of them. The sleeping bag is big enough for both of them, especially since Louise snuggles against her like a newborn kitten. Like Izzy, on cold nights. Mikasa tucks the little girl into her side and very deliberately doesn’t think about how only one of them will be able to go home. 

The anthem blasts, displaying no faces tonight. The past few days must have been dull, with all the exciting players in comas. Hopefully, the drama of the tracker jackers, Eren saving her, and even her admission that Eren gave her the scarf, will keep the audience satisfied for a few days. 

“Alright,” she says when it’s over. “Let’s try out these glasses.” Mikasa pulls them from her belt and puts them over her eyes. While most color is leached away, she can see just as clearly as noon. “Huh,” she says, and passes them to Louise. “You weren’t kidding. I wonder who else has these.”

“The Careers have at least two pairs,” she says, looking around. “I’ve spied on their camp.”

“Hm. I was about to say you should be more careful, but I guess it worked out.” 

Louise giggles. “I can keep out of sight.”

“That’s right,” Mikasa praises. “And I can shoot. Are you any good with that slingshot?”

“I’m not bad,” she says hesitantly. “But I don’t think I could kill anyone with it.”

Mikasa shrugs. “That’s what I’m here for.” Lousie takes off the glasses and hands them back. “So what else have the Careers got down at their camp?”

“Mostly weapons and food,” she says. “They’ve got all their supplies stacked in a big pile at the Cornucopia.”

“Hm.” 

Louise cocks her head. The gesture makes Mikasa think of birds, of the way that Louise stands on her tiptoes, as if poised to take off. “What are you thinking?” she asks. 

Mikasa twists the fringe of her scarf around her finger. There are still little flame designs painted on her nails, beginning to chip off. They give her an idea. “All in one pile, you say?”

“Yeah.”

Mikasa looks at Louise and smiles. “I think I’ve found a way to give the Careers a real Hunger Games experience.”

***

The snap of a branch wakes them. Mikasa shoots upright and puts a hand on Lousie, the other already gripping her bow. When it becomes clear that nobody is around, she relaxes. “Good morning,” she says.

Louise’s hair is a rat’s nest, and instinctively Mikasa begins to comb through it with her fingers. “Morning,” she yawns. 

“Did you sleep well?” she asks. 

Louise nods. 

“Good. Do you want to finish the rabbit for breakfast?” Another nod. “Alright, you can go ahead and dig it out.” It occurs to her what she’s doing, and Mikasa takes her hands off of Louise’s head. 

As they set into the rabbit and a fistful of berries, Mikasa asks, “So how far are we from the Cornucopia?”

“Mm,” Louise says around a mouthful of rabbit. “About a day’s hike. How come?”

“I meant what I said about wishing them a happy Hunger Games,” Mikasa says. “I think we should burn their food.”

Her eyes go wide. “What?”

“You said all their supplies were in one big pile, right? I say we burn it. Think about it: the Career kids don’t have to feed themselves right now. That’s why they have so much time to hunt the rest of us down.” She nods to their breakfast meaningfully. “We can feed ourselves. I’m willing to bet they don’t know how to. The years when the Careers lose the food are usually the years when someone from another district wins, right?”

“Yeah,” she says hesitantly. “Or when someone like your brother comes along.”

“Well, I’m not my brother.” She fingers an arrow. “But I would be able to send a flaming arrow into their supplies from far away. What do you think?”

Stars in her eyes, Louise says, “I think it might work.”

They decide they’re too far from the Cornucopia to make it to the Career’s base and still retreat to a safe distance before nightfall, so they’ll take today slow and plan. They’re both still rather banged up, anyway, and Mikasa realizes as soon as she begins to walk that she’s not one-hundred percent recovered from the tracker jacker venom yet. So, after treating their wounds best they can, they spend the day on an almost leisurely hike towards the lake. 

Louise tells Mikasa everything she remembers about the camp.

“Their sleeping bags are laid out by the lake,” she says, walking along a fallen tree. Mikasa has to keep from pulling her down and setting her back on solid ground. Louise isn’t Izzy, who has been known to trip and fall just walking uphill. Louise knows what she’s doing. “And the supplies are about a hundred feet away. They have one boy guarding it when they’re out, with just a spear. I think he’s from Krolva.”

“Huh,” Mikasa says. Krolva is the district that produces tech items. She can’t recall the male tribute from training, which she takes as further confirmation that this boy won’t be much of a threat. Odd, though, that they’re letting him stay. “Something’s not right about all of that.”

“I know,” Louise agrees, hopping down. She doesn’t make a sound. “But I don’t know what.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Mikasa says. 

Louise beams. 

Mikasa shoots another groosling, and they stop around noon to gather some roots that they come across. Louise is hesitant at first, not recognizing it, but she comes around when Mikasa confidently takes a bite. They munch the roots for lunch as they continue to trudge through the woods, chatting. 

Louise, Mikasa comes to understand, has five younger siblings, all of whom she adores. She sings while she works, with the mockingjays, with her fellows. She has worked in the orchards since she was seven years old—“As soon as you’re big enough to not fall out of the tree, they want you climbing,” she explains. “The small ones can get the highest fruit.”

Mikasa hums. “We usually don’t start in the mines until we’re eighteen. Since it’s so dangerous.”

“Was your brother a miner?”

Mikasa shakes her head. “Our parents were, but he won before he could start working. My sister-in-law is a washerwoman.”

Louise nods, then smirks. “What about your district partner? Was he a miner?”

“Eren is the doctor’s son. Didn’t you listen to his interview?” Immediately, she realizes that was a mistake.

“What did _you_ think of his interview?” Louise asks, grinning. “Were you surprised? You looked embarrassed. I was in the elevator with you, do you remember, you were red the _whole_ ride up.”

Mikasa sighs. “Louise—“

“And you’re still wearing his scarf! I bet that you do like him—”

“Louise.”

“—and neither of you ever talked to each other because both of you are shy!”

“Louise,” Mikasa snaps. 

The little girl blinks and stops smiling. 

“Even if I did,” she says, “There’s nothing to be done about it. It’s not like there’s any sort of future for us. Only one person wins these Games.”

Louise is silent for a long minute. “Sorry,” she says, voice small. “I didn’t mean . . .”

“It’s fine.” After a beat, Mikasa musses her hair. Levi used to do that to her when she was small. “Come on. When it gets to be dusk, we’ll cook tonight’s groosling and make a plan for tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay,” Louise agrees. They return to chatting. Mikasa learns about life in Trost, which seems grimmer even than life in Shiganshina. Their military policemen are rougher than the ones she’s familiar with (who make up a decent portion of her black market buyers). Louise nonchalantly shares a story about the night-vision glasses involving a simple-minded boy being shot on the spot for trying to take a pair home. Later, she mentions that you’re not allowed to eat the crops you pick, else you’ll be publicly whipped, which isn’t an infrequent occurrence. 

Mikasa had thought Shiganshina had it rough, but now she sees there might be advantages to being so small and poor as to escape Mitras’s notice. And Mayor Reiss turns a blind eye to quite a lot. Officially, Mikasa should be whipped daily for poaching, but everybody buys her wares and she’s his daughter’s best friend. She thinks about the ranch that the Reiss family owns, and the amount of orphans that are “employed” there. Officially, orphans are supposed to be kept in the community home. Unofficially, Mayor Reiss has a large rotating cast of children helping with his farm, whom he pays with hearty meals.

Mikasa doesn’t share any of that with Louise. Mitras wouldn’t like any of it. Instead she tells happier stories from when she was a kid or about Historia’s mischief, anything to keep the little girl in a good mood. Mostly she lets Louise talk, though. She’s a better story-teller.

It’s rare that there’s genuine laughter in the Hunger Games. She hopes the audience is liking the change. 

Come nightfall, they make a small fire and cook the day’s kill. Mikasa had let quite a few animals pass by unbothered, since the single bird is plenty to keep the pair of them fed. Having plenty isn’t a feeling Mikasa is used to. There’s a difference between hunting for enough to provide for a family of four, including two growing children, in between school and homework and cooking and minding the kids, and spending the entire day in the woods hunting for two girls. 

“So,” Louise asks, groosling grease shining down her chin, “how _are_ you gonna destroy the food?”

“I’ll burn it,” Mikasa says easily. “And if that doesn’t work, I’ll soak it in fuel, or throw it in the lake.” She bops her on the nose. “I’ll eat it!” she says, and grins when Louise giggles. 

“It’ll be your job to get them away,” she continues. “How about tomorrow, you light a big, smoky fire at some point to draw them out, and then you get as far away as possible. Maybe a couple fires. Lead them as far away as you can.”

Louise nods eagerly. “I can do that.”

“And after I’ve destroyed the food, we’ll meet back up at . . . the tree from last night?” It’s far enough away from any trails to be completely safe, but the stream will help them find the way back.

She agrees again. “And we can use the mockingjays to send signals to each other.”

“Alright. You signal me if you get stuck somewhere, okay?”

Louise nods. “This is the song I use to signal quitting time.” She sings four short notes, and sure enough, the mockingjays take it up, spreading it around the forest. 

Mikasa hums, impressed. “Clever girl.”

She beams and sits up straighter. 

They retreat up a tree again and share the sleeping bag. The anthem plays, showing no deaths. It’s not exactly like sharing the bed with Isabelle—Izzy is taller and sharper, whereas Louise is both more delicate and harder, and snores in little puffs—but Louise curls into the warmth of Mikasa’s body just the same way. Her dull coppery hair curls on Mikasa’s shoulder, her calloused little hands serving as a pillow. Mikasa wraps her arm around her warm little body, fear, dread, and happiness mixing together in her heart. 

She’s uneasy about letting Louise out of her sight tomorrow. She’s afraid of that uneasiness. Because, while it’s still unlikely that either one of them will be going home, only one person can win these games.

It takes her a long time to fall asleep. Once she does, she dreams of mockingjays singing with Levi’s voice, but she doesn’t recognize the song. 

In the morning, they’re woken by a cannon being fired. Mikasa has one hand on her loaded bow and the other thrown over Louise’s chest before she’s even spat the hair out of her mouth. A quick look around shows that they’re still completely alone. Louise groans and mumbles, “Who d’you think that w’s?”

Her thoughts flash to Eren. “Could be anyone,” she said, voice tight. “Probably the Careers found someone.”

She whines. “That means they’ve recovered ‘nough t’go hunting.”

“It’s good for us,” Mikasa says, brushing her hair out of her eyes. Her bangs really are too long. Why didn’t they cut them in Mitras? “That means they’ll take our bait, right?”

They eat breakfast, then hike a way away and prepare a big campfire. “We have to use lots of leaves,” Mikasa explains. “That way there will be plenty of smoke. But make sure you have enough solid wood for the fire to burn for a nice long while.” Then they hike for forty minutes to the left and build the bones of another fire, then divide their supplies before the-split up. Louise fidgets with everything, picks up and shreds leaves while Mikasa divides the contents of her backpack. She hesitates just a moment before handing Louise the sleeping bag. Louise protests. 

“I’ll be fine,” Mikasa assures. “I’ve got this, see?” She pats Eren’s scarf. 

Louise’s nervous smile turns mischievous. “Your _boyfriend’s_ scarf—”

“Hush,” she says.

In a sing-song, she says, “His love will keep you _warm—”_

Mikasa bops her on the head. _“Hush,_ or I’m confiscating your matches.”

Louise grins. “You’re blushing.”

“You’re _annoying,”_ Mikasa hisses. “That’s it, matches privileges revoked, hand them over.”

“No!”

“Yes!”

Louise is giggling, and that’s all Mikasa could ask for. She catches the little girl around the waist and drops her chin on her head. She’s just as tiny as Izzy is. “You be careful, okay? I need you to promise not to die.”

She turns in her grip to make it a proper hug. “I promise. And you too, right?”

“Of course,” she says. “Then I’ll see you soon.”

Louise nods, determined. “See you soon.”

And she marches off, the sleeping bag pulled over her shoulder, to go build another fire. The sunlight shines through the trees and lights her hair up. Mikasa presses her lips together and pulls Eren’s scarf over her mouth. Louise is so little. So is her slingshot. If someone finds her, without Mikasa, she’s defenseless. 

The hike to the lake only takes a few hours. She’s able to find her way easily enough, between the sun and a few landmarks she recognizes from the first few days of the Games. The closer she gets, the more aware she is of everything around her. Every rustle, every passing shadow, every protruding root catches her attention. Twice, she nearly shoots a passing animal on reflex. But she’s not hunting _animals_ right now. 

When she gets to the edge of the forest, carefully hiding in the underbrush, Mikasa finds herself with a clear view of the field where the Games began. The flat, hard ground; the elevated plates that had carried them all in here, the golden Cornucopia. And the new addition: the Careers’ camp. 

There are five people. Floch, Reiner, Annie, Bertolt, and a thin boy that Mikasa struggles to place as Tom, from Krovla. He sits apart from his menacing friends, fiddling with some sort of box. Mikasa has no clue why he’s here. He made something like a four in training, and she doubts he’s pulling any sponsors for them. Especially when next to Reiner. But they must be keeping him around for some reason. Letting him guard the camp can’t possibly be reason enough . . .

The whole group is still recovering from the tracker jacker stings. Mikasa’s own are now reddish-purplish bumps the size of her pinkie nail, thanks to ripping out the stingers and Louise’s care. The Careers (including Tom) still have a few big, yellowish lumps poking out from their clothes. Mikasa hopes that means they aren’t at their best. 

As Louise said, about a hundred yards from the campfire circle where they’ve laid their sleeping bags is the mountain of supplies. The insides of the Cornucopia have been arranged into crates, sacks, and plastic bins and stacked into a pyramid, its only protection a mesh net. 

Mikasa squints. Everything about this set-up is wrong. The distance from camp, Tom’s presence, the netting . . . she’s sure the pyramid has to be booby-trapped somehow. But how? And how to get around it?

Moreover, there’s a flaw in her original plan, too. The wooden crates and burlap sacks will burn fine, but the plastic bins might prevent an issue. She has no idea how much of the plastic stuff a fire could destroy. Any fire she lit from a burning arrow would need time to get going, and who knew if it would get hot enough to melt plastic? If she doesn’t destroy _all_ of the supplies, then this whole effort has been pointless, and she’s left Louise alone for no reason. 

As she thinks about ways around this (what’s coming to her is _more flaming arrows,_ but she doesn’t want to waste her quiver) Reiner stands, pointing to the woods far left of where Mikasa is. Without turning, Mikasa knows that Louise must have lit the first fire. The Careers stand and quickly arm themselves, briefly getting into a loud argument over whether Tom should come. Reiner shouts over them this time, saying, “He’s coming. We can use him in the woods, and his job here is done. No one can touch those supplies.”

The head off, crashing through the woods, but Mikasa doesn’t move for a long minute. She stays put, weighing her options, until it becomes clear that she has no choice but to get closer and find out exactly what is protecting the supplies. She notches an arrow and takes a slow step—only to immediately shrink back at the sight of movement a few hundred yards to her right. 

But it’s not the Careers returned. It’s a girl. Hitch. She darts out across the field, hurrying towards the supplies. Mikasa relaxes and pulls back to watch. About ten yards before the base of the pyramid, she comes to a full stop. Then—Mikasa cocks her head—she begins . . . hopping.

She studies the ground carefully before each step, rarely setting more than one foot down at a time. At one point, she leaps what must be six feet and overbalances, catching herself with her hands. She lets out a high, terrified yelp, but nothing happens. After that she’s even more careful. 

She reaches the pyramid and begins to fill a small pack. She takes a few apples from a sack dangling over the side of a bin, a sleeve of crackers from a crate, a handful of nuts. Nothing that will be missed. When she’s satisfied, she repeats her little dance until she’s out of the danger zone and runs back into the woods. No one would ever know she’d been there. Mikasa has to respect the girl’s ingenuity. 

Hitch must know what the trap is, and how to avoid it. Mikasa doesn’t know what could possibly have so many trigger points to avoid. The way that Hitch had squealed when she’d hit the ground, the triggers must unleash something awful. You’d have thought . . .

Mikasa stalks out of the woods, straight to one of the metal plates the tributes were raised up on. She thinks this might have even been Eren’s. The dirt around it is uneven; it’s been dug up and lazily pushed back into place. 

The landmines. The ones buried around the plates to keep tributes in place before the bell tolls—they’re deactivated after the bell, but Tom from Karanes must have figured out how to reactivate them. No one has ever done anything like that in the history of the Hunger Games. She bets even the Gamemakers were surprised by that.

Well, kudos to Tom, but what the hell is Mikasa supposed to do now? She can’t send a flaming arrow. She can’t get close enough to ruin the supplies any other way. Dumping them in the lake? Hysterical. 

Mikasa’s not backing down from this. She’s bringing a victory back to Louise. There’s an answer here, she’s sure of it. And it must lie with the mines. If she could activate one, by throwing a rock or something, would that trigger a chain reaction and blow up the whole pyramid? No, she can’t bet on that. Tom must have thought that through. And even one explosion will be loud enough that the Careers will hear and come running back. What Mikasa needs to do is set off a bunch of mines all at once. Maybe she could do that with rocks, but the net is there, probably to deflect that specific attack. 

She glances at the woods. The smoke from Louise’s second fire is rising. The Careers will be figuring out they’re being tricked soon and come back to camp. 

_Think, think,_ she commands herself. She traces back over Hitch’s path, trying to get in the clever girl’s headspace, when her gaze falls on the sack of apples. 

Mikasa stares. 

If she could get those apples free . . . 

She moves closer to the pyramid, calculating. _Three arrows,_ she tells herself. She plants her feet and takes a deep breath. _You get three._ The arrow vibrates as she draws the bowstring back, taking careful, careful aim. Three out of twelve is significant, but if she can do this . . . 

The first arrow tears a hole in the side of the burlap sack. The second widens it into a neat horizontal slash. Inside, the apples roll towards that corner. She can just see one teetering at the edge when she fires the last arrow. It catches the torn flap and rips it away, setting the apples free. 

Mikasa has enough time to pull her arm back and marvel at the way they tumble before she’s flung through the air.

***

She loses consciousness for maybe one second. The world goes white, then black, and then appears in color once again. Being tossed to the ground like a ragdoll had knocked her breath out of her chest; she desperately gasps in dust and smoke. The earth rumbles and bits of debris crash down around her, but Mikasa can’t hear a thing. She rolls onto her stomach and covers her head from the burning rain.

 _Girl on fire,_ she thinks. 

The ground stops quaking after a minute. After she regains her breath, Mikasa takes one look back at where the pyramid was—it’s now a charred, smoking crater—and permits herself to smile for the cameras. Then she gathers herself—bow still in hand, quiver blessedly snagged around her elbow, and flees. 

. . . She tries to. 

Standing is no meager feat. The world spins around her in huge, swinging arcs. Once upright, she manages to take a few steps before she winds up on her knees. 

_Okay,_ she thinks. _Okay._

She can’t walk, but she can crawl. It looks a lot less badass, but she absolutely has to get as far away as she can before the Careers show up. She manages to drag herself across the field, back to the safety of the underbrush. Three times a stray explosion rattles the ground and knocks her on her face. Each time, getting up is more effort. But if the Careers find her, the death they give her will be long and excruciating. Izzy and baby Benny must be at school right now, and with a major event like this, they’re probably being shown live footage. Mikasa can’t let them watch her die like that. 

Not even a full second has passed between finally dragging her feet into the bushes and the Career kids barrelling through the edge of the woods and towards what used to be their pyramid. She can’t hear their rage, but she can see it. Tom says something and tries to run, but Reiner catches him by the shirt and breaks his neck with one smooth twist. Didn’t Mikasa always imagine he could do that?

She’s clutching her scarf with both hands, praying the Gamemakers can’t get a good angle on her. While she brushes her bangs behind her ears, she feels something wet. Blood. From her left ear. That’s a bad sign. 

The Careers’ rage seems to have spent itself. Bertolt keeps pointing at the sky—they must think that whoever set off the mines died in the explosion, and the canon was drowned out under the noise. That makes Mikasa sigh with relief. They won’t begin hunting her if they think she’s dead. They retreat to the edge of the lake to let a hovercraft take away Tom’s body, and then simply settle there. One might almost think they were sulking. 

Hours pass, and Mikasa can do nothing but stay hidden. Her dizziness fades slowly. Eventually she begins to hear a ringing from her right ear. The blood from her left ear dries in a crust that she rubs off. Being unable to hear makes her panicky, but she at least has eyes on the Careers, and they have no clue she’s anywhere near them.

Eventually night falls. The crest of Paradis lights up the sky, but she can’t hear the anthem playing. The only faces shown are a girl from an outer district and Tom. The moon lights up the grim determination on the Careers’ faces as they arm themselves and stalk into the night. The exact opposite direction from her. 

Mikasa finally relaxes enough to dig through her backpack. She puts on the night vision glasses and pulls out her water bottle and a handful of the greens and berries she and Louise gathered. 

Her heart pangs at the thought of Louise. The little girl is alive, at least, but is she okay? Did she make it back to the rendezvous point? She’ll be warm tonight, and safe in a tree, she’s sure, but will she go to bed hungry or frightened? 

Mikasa is the one going to bed cold and frightened. Without her sleeping bag, the night is frigid. She can just see the clouds of her breath. The girl from Karanes, who Eren killed the first night—Mikasa has more sympathy for her now. But she grits her teeth and bears it, eventually dropping off into a restless sleep.

She wakes up slowly to a wobbly world. She fell asleep with the night vision glasses on, and taking them off returns her sight to her. And, she’s glad to realize, she can _hear._ Only from her right side, yes, and it’s funny-sounding, almost like she’s underwater, but she’ll take what she can get. 

Eventually, Mikasa accepts that she has to get moving. The Careers aren’t in their camp, so she gathers her things and begins a difficult hike towards her rendezvous point with Louise. She finds her way back to the stream, munching on a cold hunk of groosling. She refills her water and washes away the grime from her night on the ground and the explosion. The walk upstream is uneventful. She crosses old boot tracks—the Careers—and shoots a few fish, but other than that, nothing happens. The distortion slowly fades from her right ear. There’s absolutely no ability left in her left ear; she feels unbalanced and exposed. She keeps turning her head around to compensate, but it’s not the same. 

When Mikasa makes it back to the rendezvous point, the first tree they spend the night in, she draws up short. Louise hasn’t been here. It’s plain to see. 

It’s fine, though, she tells herself. The third fire she was supposed to set was far away, and Louise is such a little thing. And prone to sleepiness, she thinks, recalling their two mornings together. Surely she’s making her way back even now, carefully leaping through the trees. Like a baby bird, still figuring out how to fly. 

Mikasa climbs their tree to wait. The ground is too exposed, and she’s too vulnerable. Secure in a fork, she passes the time taking care of her wounds. The burns on her hands are but a memory, and her leg barely hurts. She thinks this round of cream might fix her up good as new. She chews up the leaves and puts them on the remains of her tracker-jacker stings. She washed her various scrapes in the stream, but she goes ahead and washes them again with her water bottle. Then she climbs down to wash her clothes. She eats the fish she shot—they won’t keep in the heat, anyway—and the rest of her roots.

Where is Louise? 

Letting the sun dry her clothes, Mikasa paces around their tree. It’s midday. Louise should be back by now. She’s too clever to have gotten lost and too quick to be taking a long time. Something has _happened_ to her. Either she’s been hurt or trapped. She’s not dead. There’s been no canon. Unless it was fired before the hearing came back to her right ear and she missed it, and Mikasa is going to see that little girl in the sky tonight—

No. She’s _fine._ Or at least she will be. 

Mikasa grabs her equipment and starts marching. 

The spot where they agreed Louise should build the third fire is only an hour’s hike from their tree. Mikasa’s legs are longer and she’s jogging more than walking, but it confirms her hunch that something is wrong. After just a minute of looking around she finds a half-built campfire. It’s constructed the way Mikasa had shown Louise, with plenty of leaves for smoke and tinder to keep it growing, but it’s small and has obviously never been lit. There’s no sign of any struggle, no sign that another person or a predator was ever here. Louise must have heard something and gotten spooked. That was the correct thing to do; Mikasa is proud of her. But . . . 

Whatever happened to Louise, it happened to her while she was building the fire. If Mikasa had just accompanied her . . . 

She fingers the arrow notched in her bow. _Louise,_ she prays. _Where are you?_

As if in answer, the trees begin to sing. She tilts the right side of her head up to be sure, but there it is: a mockingjay singing four short notes ringing out from somewhere in front of her. Mikasa heaves a sigh of relief. Louise is stuck, but she’s alive and singing. Mikasa sings the song back, already jogging ahead. She passes two more mockingjays singing Louise’s song. Louise must have sung to them just moments ago. Hopefully Louise will hear Mikasa’s reply and come out. 

Instead, Mikasa hears the gut-wrenching sound of a little girl screaming, and she bursts into a sprint. 

As loud as she can, she screams, “Louise!” She wants Louise to hear, she wants whoever is making her scream to hear, she wants them to know that she is coming and there’s no point in hurting a little girl—

_“Mikasa!”_ Louise cries. _“Mikasa, Mikasa, help!”_

“I’m coming!” she shouts. She has her bow drawn tight as she breaks through the brush into a clearing, and there’s Floch, and there’s Louise, and Floch has a spear and Louise is tangled in a net, and Mikasa’s arrow pierces through Floch’s eye a millisecond after stabs the spear into Louise’s chest.

“Are there more?” Mikasa demands, whirling around. Everything is an enemy right now, the boy’s corpse, the open space around them, the air she breathes. “Where are they?”

Louise has to say no a few times before Mikasa can hear her. 

She takes the few steps separating her from her ally and collapses beside her. She shoves Floch’s body aside, pulling out her knife to cut Louise out of the net. “It’s fine, it’s fine,” she says. “I’m here, it’s okay, I’ve got you.”

Louise rolls onto her side, shaking her head. What exactly she’s denying, Mikasa doesn’t know, but—they both know what’s going to happen. There’s no point in pretending this is fixable. Mikasa is a hunter, not a doctor; she can’t save lives. 

The spear is still buried in Louise’s chest. Pulling it out will only kill her faster. Maybe she should, maybe it would be a mercy, but the idea of speeding up Louise’s dying is simply unfathomable. Mikasa gathers the little girl into her lap, brushing the hair out of her rapidly-paling face. 

“I blew up the food,” Mikasa tells her. “All of it. Not a crumb left for them.”

Louise nods, tears in her hazel eyes. “Good.” She fumbles with her mockingjay pin, and says, “I want—you to have it,” she coughs. “They, the mockingjays, they like you, you should—”

Mikasa shakes her head in horror. “I can’t—”

“Please,” she begs. “I want you to have the luck. I want you . . . to win . . .”

Mikasa presses her lips together. “Okay.” If this is Izzy’s— if this is Louise’s last request, then Mikasa will do as she asks. She’ll do it. She’ll take the luck and she’ll win, for Louise, and she’ll bring it back to Louise’s family on her Victory Tour. Louise had managed to get it unclasped, so Mikasa takes it from her hand and pins it to her jacket with one hand, the other holding Louise’s. “I’ll win. I promise.”

“Will you,” she asks, and her voice is so small, “Stay?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Mikasa swears.

Louise’s mouth trembles. “Can you sing? You—your mockingjay song. What’s . . . the rest of it?”

“Yeah,” Mikasa says. “Of course. Yeah.” She has to swallow a few times to summon her voice, but she manages to pull it out enough to sing the old lullaby that her mom had sung for her, that Levi had sung for her, that she has sung for Izzy and baby Benny. Voice shaking, she sings: 

_“Like the scarlet night, veiling the dark,  
You can hide your fear,  
Can lie, my dear,  
Continue to dream,  
Spread your bloodstained wings._

_Like a fallen angel, riding the winds,  
You will drift and fall, like a goddess  
Into the starry night,  
Embrace me for  
Eternity,  
Fly into heaven.”_

The lyrics hit a little too close to home for this situation, the blood and the birds and the fear and heaven, but Louise smiles weakly up at her, so Mikasa hugs her tighter and keeps on singing.

_“See the flowers, breathing in the rain,  
Try growing to the edge of light,  
I’ll seize, I’ll seize the roses with my wings,  
We’ll fly.”_

Louise’s eyes drift up to the sky. Maybe she can see mockingjays. Maybe she can see heaven. She breathes ghosts of breathe, and her blood is only leaking out now, not pulsing with a heartbeat. Mikasa chokes on a sob and sings the second chorus.

_“Like a fallen angel, riding the winds,  
You will drift and fall, like a goddess  
Into the starry night,  
Embrace me for  
Eternity,  
Fly into heaven.”_

She’s not breathing, and her eyes are unfocused. But the song isn’t over, and she asked Mikasa to sing, she asked her to finish her mockingjay song. The final lines are almost too watery to make sense of, too quiet to be heard, but she manages to get them out.

_“We’ll fly away,  
We’ll find a way,  
You can hide your fear,  
Can lie, my dear,  
Embrace,  
Eternity,  
Fly into heaven.”_

The world is silent for what feels like a long, long time. Then the mockingjays begin to sing, an unearthly choir in animal interpretation of Mikasa’s voice.

She only cries for a few moments—or at least it feels like that—and soon finds herself wiping tears off her cheeks with the back of her hands. She has to go, she knows. She’s supposed to move on so the hovercraft can come and take Louise away. They’ll clean her up and ship her back home in a fine wooden casket, back to her mother and her father and her five little brothers and sisters who need her. Needed her. Still need her. 

Gently, she eases Louise’s head off of her knees and releases her hand. She closes her lifeless eyes with trembling fingers, and then, after a moment of deliberation, cuts the backpack off of her shoulders and slides it out from under her. She leaves the spear in her stomach so that no one else will take it. 

Mikasa stands. She’s curiously calm now, like grief has turned her to stone. She pulls the arrow from Floch’s eye, nudges him onto his face with her foot and takes his backpack and jacket, as well. And then there’s nothing left to do but go.

But Mikasa can’t make herself go. She can’t bring herself to just leave Louise here, tiny and broken. She can’t be hurt anymore, now, but still, to just leave her, with no one but her killer, waiting for the greater evil to take them away, without even her pin . . . 

Emotion returns in a flood, but instead of grief, now it is rage. This is _Mitras’s_ fault. They ripped Louise from her family, put her in a position where another kid would kill her, where Mikasa would kill him, where someone else might kill Mikasa. Mikasa’s fingers tighten on the wooden hilt of her knife so hard it threatens to splinter. 

Suddenly, Eren’s words from the roof echo through her head. _“I wish I had some way to show them that they don’t fucking own me. I was born into this world, the same as them. I’m not some animal to die for their entertainment. I’m not their slave. I’m me.”_

She hadn’t understood what he’d meant then. Now, she thinks she might. 

_Some way to show them . . ._

Mikasa looks behind her. Just a few feet to the side of where she burst through into the clearing is a bank of wildflowers. Some of them she doesn’t recognize, some she does, but all of them are lovely. Mikasa walks away, careful to keep an eye out so that they can’t remove the bodies she’s done. She gathers a huge armful of flowers and then sits back down next to Louise’s body. One by one, with painstaking care, Mikasa arranges the flowers around her body. She covers the bloody wound first, then tucks flowers under and over her, making a bed and tucking her in. She weaves the flowers around her head like a halo, into her hair like she’s at a festival. 

When she’s satisfied, Louise looks like she could be an angel who skipped down from heaven to take a nap in a meadow. Mikasa presses a kiss to her forehead and stands. As an afterthought, she rolls the dead boy over again and puts two bellflowers over his eyes. He isn’t her enemy anymore.

Mikasa takes a steadying breath and puts her fist over her heart, left arm pinned behind her. She salutes their bodies and walks away. 

When she’s a hundred or so yards away, the forest goes quiet in the way that signals a hovercraft. A mockingjay gives the warning whistle. Mikasa tucks her nose into her scarf and keeps walking; when the birdsong begins again, she knows that Louise is gone. 

She has no idea how much of Louise’s death that the Gamemakers showed. Maybe they cut the cameras away when she started to sing, maybe they cut away when she cried. She’d bet on the fact that they cut away from her burying Louise in flowers. Tributes aren’t supposed to grieve for each other. Sweet, fiery Mikasa Ackerman might’ve been allowed to sing a little girl to sleep and weep over her body, but the burial was something else. She was spitting on them, as much as she could, for killing her friend. 

But even if they didn’t show a single second of that, from her song to her salute, they will have to show the collection of the bodies. And everyone will know what Mikasa did. 

She finds her way back to the stream and wanders until nightfall. She half-wishes that someone would turn up. The Career pack is down to just Annie, Bertolt, and Reiner now, and they can still be held responsible for Louise’s death. But no one appears. There aren’t many of them left in this big arena. 

Night comes and Mikasa climbs up a tree. The anthem plays. Floch. Louise. Mikasa swaps her jacket, cut off at the ribs from fire damage, for Floch’s much larger, longer one. She unpacks his supplies—knives, spearheads, a bottle of water, and a pack of dried fruit. She rolls her eyes at that. It’s a _snack,_ and barely even a decent one. She guesses he hadn’t bothered to think about really _needing_ food. Why would he? He’d grown up in a rich district and he’d had all the food he could want back at his precious base. He probably had never considered that he might go hungry. 

She takes her sleeping bag out of Louise’s pack but can’t bring herself to do more than that. She’s belting herself in when a parachute falls from the sky and lands in her lap. She’s glad for the Gamemakers’ stellar aim. She’s not sure she’d have the energy to get it right now. 

Curious, she unscrews the lid. She doesn’t really need anything right now. Maybe she’s rolling in so much sponsors’ cash that Hannes is just sending her something to cheer her up? Or something for her ear? 

No. It’s a small loaf of bread. Not the city’s light, buttery rolls. It’s made from hard tesserae ration grain, but it’s not the sort of bread they make at home. It’s shaped like a crescent moon and sprinkled with seeds. _From Trost,_ she realizes numbly. It had been for Louise. The beaten-down, starving people of Trost must have scraped enough together to send a bite of home to her. Their little girl who had made it so far. But when she’d died, instead of pulling their donations, or even sending it to Reiner . . . they’d given it to Hannes to give to her instead. 

Mikasa swallows, her throat thick. She’s never heard of a district sending a gift to a tribute who wasn’t their own. “Thank you,” she says aloud, “to the people of Trost.” She traces her finger along the edge of the mockingjay pin. “I won’t let her die in vain.”

She eats half the loaf right there. It’s not exactly delicious, but it’s still warm and it tastes like home. The warmth of the bread in her belly and the scarf around her neck is enough to get her to sleep. She dreams about Louise, wreathed in flowers and shining like the sun, laughing and singing. She wakes up happy and opens her eyes sadder than ever.

The day feels a lot like some of the days after Levi’s death. When greif wasn’t so physically painful that all she could do was cry, it would feel like her body was made of iron and just moving was miserable. Her body feels weighed down. She considers just staying here in the tree all day. But you don’t win the Games by lying around, and Mikasa has to win. For more than just herself, now. She promised Louise, and she promised Izzy and Ben. She thinks about them sitting in their classrooms, watching her and worrying, and summons the will to get out of her tree. 

Nothing at all happens. She hikes. She hunts. She gets cocky, makes a fire in the middle of the day to cook a groosling, and nobody appears. All day, all she really sees is Louise’s final moments. The net, the spear. Her little fingers shaking as she unclasps her mockingjay pin. Her arrow going through Floch’s skull. 

He was her first kill, when she thinks about it. She guesses she got the credit for the three people who died in the tracker jacker attack, but she killed Floch. It feels different from killing animals. Floch was a _person,_ same as her. Same as Louise. Maybe he had little siblings who needed him, too. Maybe they all did. Her stomach rolls when she thinks too hard about it. But it’s not like she was given a choice.

The sun is only beginning to set when she climbs up a tree. She wants the day to be over already. 

Mikasa eats some bread from Trost with groosling and roots while she waits for the anthem. She hadn’t heard any canons, and the sky confirms it for her when it’s finally dark. There are five of them left. Her, Eren, Reiner, Annie, Bertolt, Hitch. 

She’s settling into her sleeping bag, wondering if they’ll let her get a full night’s sleep before pushing them together again, when trumpets blare. 

Mikasa sits up. The trumpets are rare. Usually they announce a feast at the Cornucopia, to lure starving tributes together and force them to fight. Sometimes the “feast” is just a stale loaf of bread. She and Eren are the only ones left who weren’t living off the Careers’ supplies. Are the others doing so poorly already? Mikasa is considering going to snipe the rest of the competition from the trees, but Nile Dok does not invite her to a feast. 

“Congratulations to our remaining tributes for doing so well in the Games. I have exciting news for you,” he says calmly, voice coming from every direction. “There has been a rule change.”

_A rule change?!_

What rules are there even? Cannibalism is frowned on, but other than that, doesn’t everything go? 

“Under this new rule,” he continues, “If the male and female tributes from the same district are the last two alive, both shall be declared Victors.”

He repeats himself, but the words come through her one good ear as if through water. Her head spins. Two Victors. If they’re from the same district, they can both win. 

_We can both win._

Before she can stop herself, she calls out, _“Eren.”_


	8. a fresh new path she broke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from "Lucy Gray" by William Wordsworth

_Shouldn’t have done that,_ she thinks, hand clapped over her mouth. She just announced her location to anyone nearby. But there’s nearly nobody left, and nobody is around to hear here. She’s all alone out here.

Except, she’s _not._ She pulls her hand down her face and fists it in her scarf. She can—she and Eren—they can _both_ go home. She has half a mind to climb down now and begin looking for him. But the Careers like to hunt at night and she’s still half-deaf. She puts both her hands around the knot of her scarf and smiles, conscious not to tuck it in. She wants the cameras to see. 

The rule change has to be for her and Eren. Somehow she doubts that Annie and Bertolt’s thrilling chemistry has prompted a change in the hearts of Mitras’s citizens. Eren must have been playing the star-crossed lovers angle all along. And Mikasa . . . well, she hadn’t killed him, at least. Thank God. She’d dropped the nest on him. 

She has to find him. He’ll be looking for her too, won’t he? Oh, God, how are they going to find each other? She last saw him when he saved her life, fighting off Marcel. That was, what, five days ago? He could have covered a lot of ground in five days. 

_Rest,_ she commands herself. She can’t start looking for him now. What she can do for Eren right now is make sure she’s in a fit state. 

It takes a long time before she manages to fall asleep. 

She wakes up early and is moving just minutes later, full of life and dangerous hope. She and Eren can both win. Mikasa makes sure to smile happily as she hikes back to the tracker jacker nest. She’s done nothing for the romance and has certainly reaped its benefits. Now it’s time to contribute. Before she leaves her camp, she lights a fire. Eren surely knows better than to come, but hopefully her enemies think she’s stupid enough to be nearby.

It takes her a while to find her way back to the tracker jacker tree. The cracked nest is still there, as are hundreds of shiny wasp corpses. Looking at them makes Mikasa’s skin crawl. But from where she stands, she has an excellent starting point on where to look for Eren. 

There are signs of a fight around a defined trail. The one the Careers left that leads back to the lake. She remembers Eren fighting off Marcel. Inspecting the days-old crime scene makes her think it was nasty. There are broken branches and scuffed leaves, and she even finds bloodstains splattered on a birch tree. She hopes they’re only Marcel’s, but Mikasa suddenly feels much worse about Eren’s state. If he was injured badly . . . 

She can see two fainter trails other than the Careers’. Her own, and the other one must be Eren’s. She follows it for some twenty minutes, but then it becomes clear that Eren wasn’t moving in a straight line as he ran. Tracing his steps becomes harder and harder as she goes farther. A few times she loses it so completely that she has to double back to the last certain spot and start again. 

_How far could he have run?_ she thinks, trying to put herself in the mind of a hallucinating and possibly injured Eren. He’s not dead, she reminds herself. And it’s been six days. He has to be able to move, or he surely would have died of dehydration by now . . . 

That’s her second clue. Mikasa abandons trying to follow the trail and instead heads for the stream, which she’s seen a few times along the trail. She follows it south, since that’s vaguely the direction Eren had been headed, keeping an eye out for any signs of human activity. What she wouldn’t give for her left ear back. 

The stream eventually turns into a full river. The bank is muddy so she walks in the water, taking note as the landscape begins to tip toward mountainous. They really _must_ be in the Maria mountains. The river is lined with huge rocks, and just a few feet off from the bank the ground is made of smooth, flat riverstones. The occasional tree cracks out of the rocks. 

There! On the tree. Dried brown smears. Old bloodstains. “Eren,” Mikasa says quietly. He was here. 

Invigorated, Mikasa keeps looking. As she continues south, she finds more blood. It evolves from smears into full handprints, which make her more and more anxious about Eren’s condition, but more certain that she’s on the right path. “Eren,” she says again, louder. _Where are you?_

She tries not to think about how, last time she went looking for someone, she found them just in time to watch them die. 

She continues downriver, eyes peeled and ear strained. A few minutes later, she hears Eren Jaeger’s voice say, “Hey.”

Mikasa whips around, but no one is there. “Eren?” she says. 

Nobody responds. 

She shakes her head. _What?_ A few steps more, and again, Eren says, “Hey, babe, watch your step.”

The voice comes from right below her. Mikasa looks at her feet; gasps and stumbles back when the mud splits to reveal blue-green eyes. A white smile breaks through as Eren laughs weakly. “Nice face,” he says. 

“Oh my God,” Mikasa says, kneeling in the mud beside him. Eren slowly, painstakingly pushes himself up on his elbows. Watching him emerge from the mud is fascinating and mildly disconcerting.

“What,” he says. “Didn’t recognize me?”

“This is amazing,” she says. It is. She can only pick out the rest of his body because she knows where to look. He’s buried in a layer of mud, decorated with rocks and weeds. Every part of him, even his face, is disguised so perfectly that she never would have spotted him if he hadn’t revealed himself. His hair seems to be the only part of him not caked with mud, and that’s only because it was tucked under weeds. Instinctively, Mikasa begins brushing a hand through his hair to get the dirt out.

Eren grunts, closing his eyes. “So. I hear we’re Team Shiganshina.”

“Team Shiganshina,” she agrees. “You’re injured.”

“Left calf. Marcel got a good slice in.” He hesitates before adding, “It’s infected.”

“Okay.” Mikasa takes this in stride. “Let’s get you cleaned up so we can take a look at you.”

“Super.” He sighs and opens his eyes. “Hey. C’mere. Gotta tell you something.” Mikasa leans forward. Eren tilts his head toward her and whispers, “I’m a doctor’s apprentice, so I just thought I should let you know: kissing it better is a one-hundred-percent valid method of treatment.”

A little laugh bursts out of her before she can stop it and she shakes her head. “Oh yeah? Your dad told you that?”

“Mhm,” he says. “First thing you learn. Kindergarten stuff.” He’s smiling, looking like an overwhelmingly fond mud monster. He’s a very good actor, especially considering the pain he must be in. “I’m really glad to see you.”

“Me, too,” she says. “Let’s get you clean so,” she stumbles here, but presses on, “so I can see that—handsome face of yours.”

Eren collapses back into the bank and laughs. It’s dry and weak, but real. “Shit, Mikasa, don’t hurt yourself there.”

He’s _very_ good at this. She’ll try not to make him cover for her any more than he has to. “Sorry,” she says. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

They manage to get Eren sitting, propped up against some rocks. Mikasa digs her old jacket out of her supplies and dunks it in the river to use as a rag. It takes a while, but eventually she manages to get most of the mud washed off of Eren. She unzips his jacket and cuts away his undershirt. He has a faint red line across his chest, an old burn, a patchwork of bruises, and three tracker jacker stings including the one under his ear. He had the sense to pull the stingers and the mud might have helped. Mikasa fusses over these injuries first. “I’m sorry about these,” she says, chewing up some of Louise’s leaves.

“Mm. ‘S fine,” he says. “It was good actually. Kept you alive.” He scowls up at her. His face is pale under the remaining tinge of mud. “Why the hell were you still there, though?”

“I had to get the bow.” She pops the leaves out of her mouth and places them on Eren’s stings.  
He sighs with relief. “That’s nice. I know you had to get the bow. Why were you just sitting there?”

“I couldn’t move,” she says, voice small. 

“. . . Yeah. I know. The venom does that to you.” Eren, with a great deal of effort, manages to lift his arm and touch the ends of her hair. His eyes are soft. “You cut your hair.”

“Huh? Oh, it was burned off in the fire,” she says. 

“Oh. Well. It looks cute.”

Mikasa blushes. “You’re delirious.”

“You’re oblivious.” He exhales heavily. “I do have a fever. I’ve got some pills for it in my backpack.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” she scolds. “Where’s your backpack?”

He nods towards a lump of weedy mud that turns out to be a bright red backpack. She finds the zipper and digs out a mighty first aid kit. She forces Eren to eat a few crackers before swallowing down the pills. He does it uncomplainingly, but even that seems to make him nauseous. 

Mikasa cleans his scratch and slathers her burn medicine over his burn. Eren grunts when he sees it. “Hannes send you that?”

“Yes,” she says, distracted by screwing the lid back on the rubbing alcohol.

“Yeah, that tracks,” Eren mutters. 

She lets Eren rest while she washes his jacket and shirt in the river. Scrubbing the muck out of his clothes is no small feat, but the mindless task is comforting. This, at least, she knows she can fix. 

He’s nearly nodded off by the time she’s done. “Hey,” she says. “Eren. Are you okay?”

“I’m great,” he says. “Don’t suppose you’ll let me sleep.”

“Shouldn’t I look at your leg?”

“Ugh. Yeah. It’s long past time the bandages were changed.” He twitches a finger at his backpack. “They’re in there. If you’re okay with cleaning it, too . . .”

“Of course,” she says, rummaging around. It’s her fault that Eren was injured. He saved her life. Twice now. She’s going to repay that. 

“Yay,” says Eren, sounding as unhappy as she’s ever heard him. “Fair warning, it’s not pretty.”

“I’ll manage.”

He smiles again. “You’re a natural, Nurse Ackerman. Shouldn’t be surprised.”

She’s able to pull his boots, socks, and pants off to find dirty white bandages wrapped tight around his entire calf. She carefully unwinds them and nearly loses her breakfast at the sight. 

Eren’s leg is cut open to the bone, oozing blood and pus. Mikasa doesn’t know the first thing about medicine, but she can tell that this is no mild cut. She exhales shakily and says, “First thing I do is clean it, right?”

“Yeah.” His voice sounds almost amused at how clearly lost she is. She’d take offense if he wasn’t in so much pain. 

She cleans the wound out with simple purified water. Eren murmurs instructions and bites back groans when she cleans out some tissue that’s turned an awful gray color. Then she cleans it as quickly as she can with the rubbing alcohol. She has to stop a few times because Eren is shaking from pain, even when he pushes her to keep going. The gash gets cleaned in the end, but she suspects that Eren might’ve gone easy on her and told her an unsatisfactory job was good enough when it wasn’t. She certainly seemed more upset by his pain than he did. 

“I was thinking about putting the leaves on it,” she says, twirling the fringe of her scarf around her finger. “It seems to draw out infection, at least?”

“Go for it,” Eren mumbles. 

She does, and within minutes pus is running down his leg in streams. Eren says it’s a good sign and Mikasa forces herself to believe him. She washes his pants and socks in the stream and leaves them on a rock with his shirt and jacket to dry.

Standing above her half-asleep ally, Mikasa takes a long look at him. In nothing but his undershorts, it’s easy to take in how badly off he is. His legs also have a few minor burns, which she treats quickly, and his chest looks like someone beat him thoroughly. His arms are covered in bruises, too, like he’d crashed into a dozen trees. 

_This is my fault,_ she thinks. Everything: the fire, the tracker jackers, Marcel, all of it could be traced back to her. A lump forms in her throat. 

The good news is that, while he’s pale and weak, Eren hasn’t been starving. He tells her he’d eaten from the food in his pack and even managed to spear a few fish and cook them on the rocks. He’s definitely skinnier than when he first came into the arena, but she doesn’t have to worry about his body eating itself. Especially not now that she’s here. 

She uses her old jacket to mop up the pus, holding back bile. When she’s done, she dunks it in the river and pins it there under a rock. It needs to be washed for a long, long time. 

“You can try putting the burn medicine on it, if you want,” Eren tells her. “It might help with the infection. Oh, and Mikasa?”

She turns to him, bangs falling in her face. “Yeah?”

He grins a little. “Wanna try kissing it better now?”

Mikasa can’t help it, she smiles, half-laughing. “You’re terrible.”

“I’m dying. I’ve earned the right to shamelessly hit on you.”

“You’re not dying. Shut up and eat more of your crackers.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mikasa slathers his leg up before winding fresh bandages around him. She feels better once it’s all wrapped up, and, she’s happy to see, the swelling has gone down. 

“Okay,” she says. She hands Eren Marcel’s backpack. “Cover yourself up and I’ll wash your shorts.”

Eren says, “Eh, I don’t care if you see me.”

Mikasa’s face flames. _“I_ care, alright?” She stands and turns her back, facing the river. 

“You know, you’re actually pretty squeamish,” he says. His shorts splash into the river. He must be feeling better if he’s got some cheek back. “How do you manage to hunt?”

“Killing stuff is a lot easier,” she grumbles. “Although for all I know, I might be killing you.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” he says. “You’re doing great.”

Eren dozes off after that, and Mikasa gives all his clothes another viscous scrub and lets them dry. She shoots two fish and sets them cooking on the rocks like Eren had mentioned. Careful to never lose sight of Eren, Mikasa explores the nearby area and finds a half-decent little cave that will serve as shelter for the night. She covers the floor in a thick layer of pine needles in little bursts, never going five seconds without checking that Eren is still there, and no one else is. She unrolls her sleeping bag and lays it on the floor. It should be comfortable enough. There are a few fallen tree branches around, still with their leaves on them, that she drags down and uses to obscure the entrance as best as she can. By late afternoon, she’s satisfied that they’ll be okay in there. She shakes Eren awake. 

“Hey,” she says. “Eren.”

His dazed eyes focus on her. “Hm? Yeah?”

“We’ve got to go.”

“Go? Where?”

She nods downstream. “I want to get us somewhere with more cover. I’ve found a little cave that will be okay.”

“Cozy,” he mutters. She helps him get dressed (some things she lets him do alone) and then helps him stand. Mikasa knows immediately that this is going to be difficult. Eren can stand alright, but the second he puts weight on his left leg his face goes white. He uses her as a crutch, and slowly, awkwardly, they’re able to hobble through the stream and into the cave. “It _is_ cozy,” he pants as they settle him in. 

“I did my best,” she says. She brushes his hair out of his face gently. He’s snow-white and shivering, but safer than he was. “Let me go get the rest of our stuff.”

She comes back with the backpacks, her bow and quiver, and their fish. He smiles a little when he sees that she cooked the fish the way he’d told her, but he won’t eat them. 

“Mikasa,” he says, as firmly as he can. “I promise you, I’ll only throw it up again.” He eventually consents to eat some of the dried fruit and take his pills, but that’s only after several minutes of pleading from her. 

And then there’s nothing else to be done. She sits beside him, eating the fish and fidgeting with her scarf. The sun sets. The nightlife wakes. There are frogs in this river, and their croaks form a sort of melody. It’s nice, anyway. Mikasa watches the entrance, and Eren watches her. “Hey,” he says after a while. “Where’d this come from?” He nods down at her chest. 

Mikasa looks down at the mockingjay pin on her jacket. “Oh. It’s Louise’s. Do you remember the little girl from Trost? We teamed up for a few days. She . . . she gave it to me before she . . .” She clears her throat. “She said it was good luck. She wanted me to have it.” 

Eren nods, eyes hard. “I owe her thanks, then. Your good luck has been mine.” He traces the edge of the pin with his fingertips. “Mikasa,” he says again. “Thank you for finding me.”

She looks over at him. His face has some color back in it, but he’s sweating. “You would have found me, if you could have.”

“‘Course. But listen, Mikasa, if I don’t—”

“Shush. You’ll be fine.”

He gives her a look. “Mikasa, I just want—”

“We’re not discussing this,” she says, fighting the urge to put her hands over her ears. The idea of Eren dying doesn’t bear thinking about. 

“Listen--”

Mikasa kisses him. 

It’s probably overdue, since she and Eren are supposed to be desperately in love, so Mikasa tries her best to make it convincing. It’s her first kiss ever. His lips are feverishly hot and chapped, and he tenses up almost comically before his hand flies up to her neck and grips her there, fingers slipping beneath the scarf. When Mikasa pulls away, his eyes are wide. “You’re not dying,” she says. “Okay? You’re not allowed to.”

“Okay,” he agrees breathlessly. 

They sit there looking at each other for a minute before a clatter comes from outside. Mikasa whips around, lunging for her bow, but then she realizes it was just the sound of a parachute package landing. She crawls to the mouth of the cave and snatches the parachute inside. She unscrews the lid eagerly, praying it’s medicine, but it’s only chicken broth. 

Mikasa tries to mask her disappointment, sure that her face is on every screen in Paradis right  
now. She can’t appear ungrateful. 

Why would Hannes send her something like this? Eren doesn’t need broth, she’s perfectly capable of keeping him fed! He needs _medicine,_ and using precious sponsors’ money to send him supper isn’t going to help him, so why . . . ?

It’s not for him, she realizes. It’s for her. A message. A kiss for a pot of broth. Their sponsors come from their romance, and if she wants the kind of money it takes to save Eren, then she’s going to have to work at it. She has to be madly in love and desperate to make it home with Eren, if she has any hope of doing so.

How many kisses to get Eren the medicine he needs? 

Only one way to find out. Mikasa plasters a smile on her face and scoots back into the cave. “Eren,” she says, trying to replicate the way that Levi said Petra’s name. She thinks of the way that they used to hold hands over the table, the way Petra would tease him, the way Levi only seemed to fully relax when she was around. She holds the pot of broth up for Eren. “Look what Hannes sent you.”

***

It takes a lot of coaxing and a lot of kissing for Eren to finally sip all the broth, but she thinks he looks stronger once he does. He falls asleep immediately after, tucked in her sleeping bag, and Mikasa readies herself for a long night of keeping watch. She’s infinitely more vulnerable than she was this time yesterday: grounded, cornered, with an extremely wounded ally to care for. She wouldn’t have made any other choice, but she can admit that she’s at a disadvantage, now. 

The anthem plays. No deaths, but hopefully watching her and Eren’s budding romance is enough to keep the audience satiated until Eren can at least move again. 

The night is cold, and eventually Mikasa gives into the temptation to climb into the sleeping bag with Eren. It will look sweet, she thinks. It’s toasty warm, and she sighs happily before realizing that it’s more than warm: it’s _hot._ It’s burning up. The fabric is reflecting the heat of Eren’s fever back, and her poor ally is all but cooking. 

Mikasa bites her lip. She wishes she knew what to do. Take him out of the bag to cool him down? Leave him in and hope the heat breaks the fever? She considers waking him and asking, but he might be so woozy that he can’t give her a good answer. In the end, all she does is put a wet bandage on his forehead. Levi or her mother used to do that for her when she was small. 

It’s a long night. 

Morning comes with the sounds of songbirds, and Mikasa shakes herself from her half-doze to face the day. She’d found a blueberry bush while she was exploring yesterday, and mashes the berries into the broth pot with water to make a sort of jelly. When she comes back into the cave, Eren is awake and struggling to push himself up. His face crumples with relief at the sight of her. 

“You scared me,” he says. “I woke up and you were gone.”

Mikasa smiles. The idea of Eren, as he is, worrying for _her_ is kind of silly. “I’m alright. Sorry I scared you.” 

He scowls. “What were you doing?” 

She holds out the pot. “Breakfast.” She digs out the last of the bread from Trost and dunks it into her “jelly.” The bread is kind of stale now, but it tastes fine. She’s able to get Eren to eat a few bites, too. “How do you feel?”

He smiles at her. Even as ill as he is, he’s so handsome. “Miles better than yesterday. I’m clean, fed, a roof over my head, and the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen playing nurse for me.”

Mikas smacks him lightly. “I’m not _playing_ nurse, here.”

“You’re right.” He grins. “You’re doing a great job, babe.”

As soon as the words leave his mouth, Mikasa yawns. Eren raises his eyebrows at her. “Did you sleep at all?”

“No,” she says. 

“Okay. Doctor’s orders—take a nap, Mikasa.” He pats the spot on the sleeping bag next to him. “I can keep watch.” She opens her mouth to protest. “Mikasa. You can’t stay awake forever.”

She huffs. He’s not wrong. And at least for now, not quite so feverish. She puts her hand on his forehead to check his temperature—or, tries to. Eren catches her hand in his own and presses a kiss to her knuckles. Mikasa feels her own face catch on fire. “Go to sleep,” he orders.

Mikasa presses her lips together and lies down next to him. Eren sits up against the cave wall and rests one hand on her head, stroking her bangs to the side. It’s a soothing gesture, unlike the kissing. Mikasa lets it lull her to sleep.

She wakes in the early afternoon, Eren’s hand just resting on her neck. Sitting up, she says, “You let me sleep awhile.”

“You’re a cute sleeper,” he says. “And you didn’t miss anything.”

Mikasa eyes him critically. He’s pale and shaking slightly, and even though the look on his face is soft, he’s obviously hurting. She puts a hand on his forehead and bites her lip. “You’re too hot.”

He smirks a little, but it seems put-on. “Thank you.”

She rolls her eyes. “When was the last time you had a fever pill?” 

“Like ten minutes ago,” he says. “And I’ve been eating and drinking, see?”

One water bottle is almost completely empty and half a pack of fruit is gone, which Mikasa begrudgingly accepts as proof. She tells him it’s time for treatment and as they’re taking his shirt off, he mutters something about this not being at all what he’d imagined.

“What?” she asks, mouth full of leaves.

He sighs. “Nothing.”

She lets it go and chews the leaves until they’re sufficiently mashed, then puts them on his stings. They look better already, and his burn, too. She rubs another layer of burn cream on it and washes the traces of his cut before steeling herself. “Alright,” she says. “Let’s check your leg.”

She rolls up his pants over his knee and unwraps the bandages. It looks . . . not terrible? The swelling has gone up by a lot, but the pus is gone, and it doesn’t look like it’s festered any more. There are little pinkish streaks climbing out from the wound, though, along what are probably his veins and arteries. Eren, bent at a funny angle to check his leg, says simply, “Shit.”

“What?” Mikasa says. “What’s wrong? What do those mean?”

“I’ve got fucking sepsis.”

Mikasa doesn’t know what sepsis is, but the word sets her heart beating faster. “How do I fix it?”

He smiles grimly. “You have any serious drugs on you?”

_“Eren.”_

He huffs. “I’m serious, Mikasa. I don’t know that I could fix this with all of our supplies back home. Let alone in a cave with herbs for wasp stings and cream for second-degree burns.”

She sits up straighter. “Okay then, fine. We’ll just get you back to Mitras and they’ll fix you up there.” Eren has the nerve to scowl at her. “I’m serious,” she insists. “You can outlast the others. It’s happened before.”

“Sure,” he agrees. He’s taking pity on her. She hates it.

“I’m . . .” she says shakily. “I’m going to make soup for you. We need to keep your strength up.”

He gives a weak thumbs-up as she steps out of the cave. 

Mikasa keeps her face carefully blank. She can’t show the cameras any weakness. Unless—should she? Will it move the sponsors if she breaks down in tears? She settles for biting her lip and bunching her hand in Eren’s scarf. She did say that it was Eren’s scarf, didn’t she? She mentioned it to Louise. Hopefully the audience caught that part of their conversation. Maybe she should find a time to work the whole story in. She doesn’t want to. That story is wrapped in grief and desperation and terror. It’s nobody’s business but hers and Eren’s. But if it will save him . . .

Mikasa has been cooking roughly half the meals for her family since she was nine, so she’s got some idea with what to do for the soup. She purifies a pot of water and leaves it on the scalding rocks while she waits. She shreds the rest of the groosling and a handful of roots and plops them in the water. There was a clump of chives that she remembers from her exploration yesterday that she remembers from her exploration yesterday. Cutting them with her long, serrated knife is a bit of work, but the end result is worth it. She tosses them in and screws the lid back onto the pot, and lets it cook for a while. 

If she really is going to keep Eren alive long enough to get him back to Mitras, she needs to get decent food into him. There are enough greens around, and the fish are easy, but there’s no harm in a varied diet. Game usually tastes better than fish, anyway, and it’s important to make sure he keeps an appetite. As she rigs a dozen snares, she considers the rest of the tributes. 

Everyone except them had been relying on the Careers’ supplies. And since the rule change was announced, Annie and Bertolt are the only pair left. If Reiner hadn’t split from them already by then, she’s positive there was a fight. Any or all of them could be just as injured as Eren. She would take that chance and risk going hunting if it were just her, but she can’t possibly leave Eren here, alone and undefended. And Hitch . . . Mikasa could probably take her in a fight, but she doubts Hitch will let herself be directly confronted. She’ll just have to be sure that she and Eren don’t fall asleep at the same time. 

The thought sends Mikasa back to the cave, though it’s never been out of sight. Eren hasn’t had his throat cut, but she can’t say he looks okay. His face brightens when she comes in, but he’s visibly miserable. 

“Hey,” she says. 

“Hey.” He struggles upright. It’s more of an effort than it was yesterday. Mikasa helps him lean back against the cave wall. “How’s the outside world?”

“You’re not missing much,” she says. “How do you feel? Do you want anything?”

“Hm.” His eyes trace her face. “Can you tell me a story? Something with a happy ending?”

She smiles, a little confused. Happy stories? Most of her happy stories involve her childhood with Levi, but she’s not sure the audience will like her smearing the residual grief over what should be a cute moment between young lovers. That leaves a few stories with Historia or her niece and nephew. Mikasa decides on one of those, as it’s more likely to make the audience want her to get home. Knowing she has such sweet children to get back to. 

“Did I ever tell you how I got Izzy’s goat?”

His eyes light with some recognition. “I’ve heard my brother’s side of this story, but tell me yours.”

The real beginning of the story is that, three days before Izzy’s ninth birthday, Mikasa shot a deer. She’s only ever shot three, and this was the second. She’d brought it to the butcher after dark, rather than to the black market where it might be literally torn from her, and the butcher paid her more money than she’d ever held in one hand. And while people probably have the idea that Levi had taught her some less-than-legal extracurriculars, Mikasa doesn’t want to outright say that. She tells Eren that she sold an old dress of her mother’s and begins the story from there. 

Zeke Jaeger had turned his back on succeeding his father as the town doctor after his mother died. With what money she’d left for him, he’d bought a house on the edge of town and three goats. Now, he makes his living breeding the goats and selling their wares. On the day that Mikasa was walking through town with full pockets, hunting for a birthday present, she stopped by for a glass of milk and saw a tiny kid with only two and a half legs. 

Mikasa had known instantly what she was getting for Izzy. 

She’d haggled with Zeke for ages over the price of the goat, which he said he’d promised to the butcher. But the butcher, who liked Mikasa better, had taken one look at the tiny thing and turned her nose up. Despite Zeke’s warnings that the baby might not survive the coming weeks, Mikasa had bought her off him and carried her home, swaddled in a blanket like a baby, _baa_ -ing all the way. She’d been so anxious. If the kid died, Izzy would be devastated, and Mikasa would have wasted a Seam’s small fortune.

“You should have seen the look on Izzy’s face,” Mikasa says. “She was so excited that she burst into tears and started laughing all at once. She hardly set that baby down until it was too big for her to hold.”

Eren is smiling. “Zeke came by that night and told me you’d bought a crippled baby goat. I remember I was so jealous that he’d talked to you. Which is ridiculous.”

She hums. “It is. Your brother is old enough to be my dad.”

“Yeah, well, I was thirteen. What happened then?”

Mikasa sighs. This is a pleasant memory for her. “That first day, Izzy just carried her around and fed her. She gave her all sorts of grass and food, to see what she liked best. That’s where the name Bean comes from. She slept on the floor in front of the fireplace with her. And the next day, we built Bean a little peg for the rest of her back leg. Once we got her walking, she seemed right as rain. Izzy, Ben, and I would take her down to the meadow to graze every day.” She thinks back. “We used to put flowers in her fur.”

He yawns. “I see why it makes you happy.”

Mikasa shrugs. “Well, ever since we took her back to Zeke and got her knocked up, she’s been a little goldmine. She’s already paid for herself twice over.”

Eren rolls his eyes. “Yeah, that’s what I meant. Not the lasting joy you gave to the niece you love so much you took her place in the Hunger Games.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mikasa says. “Do you feel better?”

“Loads,” he says. Mikasa checks his temperature. His fever’s gone up. Her heart crawls into her throat.

“You feel a little bett—” she gets out, but then the sound of trumpets drowns her out. Mikasa shoots to attention, unwilling to miss a single syllable. It’s her best friend, Nile Dok, and this time he _is_ inviting her to a feast. But she and Eren are well-fed. Again, Mikasa considers going just to snipe out the competition, but only for a moment. She can’t leave Eren for that long. She’s already shaking her head when Nile says:

“Some of you are already turning me down. But this is no ordinary feast. Every one of you needs something, desperately. The thing you need will be inside a backpack marked with your district’s crest in the Cornucopia, at dawn tomorrow. Consider carefully before you decide. For some of you, this is your last hope.”

There’s no obvious end to the announcement, just the return of birdsong. Mikasa starts when Eren grabs her shoulder. 

“You’re not going,” he commands. “Under no circumstances are you going.”

Mikasa huffs. “Of course I’m not going. I’m not going to deal with Annie, Bertolt, and Reiner all at once.”

Eren grits his teeth, real anger in his face. “You can’t lie to save your life, Mikasa. You’re _not_ going. Even you can’t take all three of them—and Hitch—at once.”

Mikasa sets her jaw. “Fine. I am so going, and I don’t see how you’re going to stop me.”

“I’ll follow you,” he says. “If I can’t walk, I’ll drag myself, hollering after you the whole time. Even if I can’t make it all the way, I bet someone will track me down and kill me.”

She stares at him. Eren Jaeger is about the most stubborn person she’s ever met. His pain tolerance, remaining strength, and sheer, blind force of will might manage to get him far enough to be in danger. If the exertion didn’t kill him, another tribute, or even an animal, probably would. Mikasa can’t tie him up—she doesn’t have any goddamn rope—and if she tries to knock him out, she might give him brain damage on top of everything else.

“I can’t just sit here and watch you die, Eren,” she says. The audience would only hate her half as much as she’d hate herself. 

“I won’t die,” he swears. “I promise. If you promise not to go.”

They’re at a stalemate. 

“Fine,” she snaps. “I’m going to go get your soup. You have to eat every bit of it, you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he agrees, softening. 

She angrily fetches the soup. The temperature has already begun to drop, even though the sun is still out. Mikasa bets the Gamemakers are messing with the temperature. 

She’s going to the feast. She has to. She knows in her gut that Eren will die in the next few days if she doesn’t. And he’s a doctor, surely he knows that, too! Why in the world is he so insistent that she doesn’t go? It plays well into the lie that they’re madly in love, but it’s a stupid move in the long run. 

Back inside the cave, they split the soup. Eren eats as much as she gives him, enthusiastically, even, and starts talking about how good it is. His fever is talking again. He took a pill for it not three hours ago.

Mikasa leaves the cave to wash the pot, fighting back tears. 

_Eren’s gonna die,_ she thinks. He’s going to die because she can’t save him from injuries he got because he fought off Marcel to protect her. He’s going to die, like Louise, and Mikasa will be left alone in this arena again. It’s all her fault, it’s all, all, all her fault. Mikasa pulls her scarf over her nose and tries very, very hard not to cry. 

She’s so lost in her own misery that the parachute nearly hits her in the face. Mikasa snatches it out of the air and tears into it—it’s a vial! Medicine, surely—it’s so small. She has no idea how Hannes was able to do it, how thoroughly he must have played some rich, romantic fools, but she doesn’t care. She almost runs back to Eren, giddy, when doubt wriggles in. 

. . . It’s a very small vial. And Eren is so very sick.

She unscrews the cap and takes a careful sniff. It’s a sugary sweet smell, one she recognizes, and definitely one Eren will recognize. It’s sleep syrup. A common medicine back in Shiganshina, and a powerful one. A vial this size could probably knock a man out for a full day. Eren and his father must use it all the time. 

Mikasa nearly throws it into the river in frustration. She understands what Hannes wants her to do, but she just doesn’t think she’ll be able to trick a doctor’s apprentice into taking the most recognizable knock-out drug there is. 

. . . He is _very_ feverish. And this is her _only_ shot. 

Mikasa squares her shoulders and heads back to the blueberry bush. She mashes a handful in the pot and pours the sleep syrup in, hoping the berries will help mask the taste. She adds a few mint leaves for the hell of it, squares her shoulders, and heads back into the cave. “Dessert,” she says, as cheerily as she can. “I found a bush of sweetberries.”

“Yum,” Eren says. He reaches for her automatically as he struggles upright, his green eyes shining with fever. He catches her hand and just holds it. 

Mikasa smiles, trying not to show how anxious she is. “C’mon, open up.” Eren grabs the spoon from her hand and takes a huge bite. 

“Wow,” he says, brow crinkling. “This is sweet.”

“Like I said, sweetberries. Have you never had their jam before?” Her heartbeat flutters in her throat. 

“I think I must’ve,” he says, taking a second bite. The medicine mash is nearly gone; God bless teenage boys’ appetites. “It’s real familiar.”

“The bakery uses them a lot in muffins and waffles,” she says. 

“I c’n see why,” Eren says around the last spoonful. “They’re sweet as—” His eyes go wide, and Mikasa lunges over him to clamp her hands over his mouth and nose. He thrashes, trying to throw her off, but Mikasa is strong, and he’s already slipping into unconsciousness. Up until the last second when his eyes finally close, he looks _furious._

He drops, deadweight, after just a few seconds. He’ll be out like a light for a good long while.

Mikasa sits back and blows her bangs out of her face, proud and sad all at once. “How about it, Eren?” she says. “Guess I can lie to save _your_ life.”

***

Come dawn, Mikasa is crouched in the same bushes she’d hidden in after she blew up the food, heartbeat pounding in her veins.

She’d left Eren a few hours ago with the first aid kit, two purified water bottles, all their food, a newly camouflaged entrance to their cave, his short sword, and a kiss. He was still totally knocked out, as he’d been all night as she snuggled against him. 

She keeps her face calm as she watches the Cornucopia. Despite the early hour, Izzy, Ben, and Petra are probably all awake. Shiganshina is probably shut down now. With both their tributes alive, so late in the Games, with an event like a feast, Mitras has probably granted the whole district a special holiday leave. No school or work. Only the Games. 

It might even actually feel like a holiday. Mikasa can’t remember having a tribute survive this long. The last might have even been her brother. Maybe people are crowded in the square and in community centers, cheering for her even now. Maybe Izzy is hopeful. Maybe baby Benny is blinking tiredly at the screen, clutching the faded blue baby blanket that had once been Mikasa’s. Maybe there are other families at their home, there to offer Petra as much support as they can. Maybe Historia is at their house right now, fussing over the kids. Maybe, even, the Jaegers are over. Or maybe her family is in their townhouse right now. She wonders if they’ve interacted much. Surely they have. Their children are a team now--and more than that, pretending to be in love. Once it's down to the final eight, they interview friends and family. She wonders what people back in Shiganshina have said. 

It’s freezing as she waits for something to happen. She’s wearing her own jacket and Floch’s on top of it, Louise’s pin shining proudly over her heart, and her scarf is pulled over her nose and mouth. If it weren’t for that barrier, her breath would be visible as great white puffs. 

_Thank you, Mrs. Doctor,_ she thinks. She’s going to make sure to thank Carla Jaeger for her kickass knitting properly. With her son returned home, whole and safe. 

This is Eren’s only chance. If she doesn’t get this medicine back to him, he’ll be dead within the next few days. Her heart clenches painfully at the thought. She’d left him snoring, sprawled out spread-eagle. He’ll be unconscious until at least this evening. Mikasa refuses to leave him like that, helpless and dying, until then.

She keeps her eyes trained on the Cornucopia, which looks exactly the same as it had three days ago. In the gray pre-dawn light, it’s more of a dull yellow than golden. When the first ray of sunlight hits the metal, it begins to sparkle. In that exact moment, the ground before the Cornucopia splits open and a table raises up, four backpacks sitting on it. 

Mikasa is already sprinting for it by the time Hitch shoots out of the mouth. She grabs the backpack marked with her district crest and runs to the west. She gives Mikasa a cheeky wave, and Mikasa glowers.

 _Fucking bitch,_ she thinks, angry and jealous that the other girl had such a clever plan. Mikasa is relying entirely on speed here, and the hope that maybe Reiner and the Careers will think of each other as bigger threats. 

She was wrong about that. 

She sees the glimmer of Annie’s hair and the glimmer of her knife at exactly the same time. Annie had run out of the woods just a few seconds after Mikasa. Annie throws the first knife a split second before Mikasa shoots her first arrow. Neither of them are at their most accurate as they run full-tilt. The knife flies over Mikasa’s shoulder, jolting the top of her quiver. The arrow is luckier, it hits Annie in her left shoulder. She cries out and yanks out the arrow. Mikasa reloads her bow as she runs, and those few seconds where Annie isn’t actively trying to kill her give her enough time to grab the small bag marked with Shiganshina’s winged crest. Her fingers snatch the drawstring and she punches her arm forward to sling it up and over her elbow. 

Another knife flies, slicing right across her forehead. A hot gush of blood blinds her right eye and spills into her open mouth. Mikasa stumbles back and fires an arrow to where she judges Annie to be, misses, and is tackled to the ground. 

They roll, grabbing at each other’s hands and hair as they tumble. Mikasa screams, with what emotion, she doesn’t know. She’s bigger than the other girl, but lighter, and Annie knows how to fight. Annie manages to get on top of her but Mikasa rolls and unseats her. She can’t fucking shoot another arrow, and she doesn’t have time even to pull her knife from her belt before Annie tackles her again. She’s already got a knife in her hand and she brings it down hard on the ground where Mikasa’s neck was a moment ago. She draws back and tries to stab down again, but Mikasa blocks the motion of her arm with her own wrists. They’re in that standstill for a few seconds—it feels like a few years— growling and snarling at each other, before she’s able to push her hand over Annie’s face and shove her away. Annie reels back only to throw her whole body into another stabbing attempt. Mikasa is able to roll them over in that brief moment, but Annie just continues the momentum until she’s back on top of Mikasa. She sits on her chest, pressing her weight down, and pins Mikasa’s shoulders to the ground with her knees. 

_Levi,_ Mikasa thinks, flinching back. _Petra, Izzy, Benny. Eren._

“Hey, Mikasa,” Annie says, eyes cold and hard even as she gasps for breath. Mikasa thrashes, but Annie’s grip doesn’t give. “It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? Haven’t seen you since you dropped a tracker jacker’s nest on me.”

So Annie is going to draw this out. Mikasa can’t say she’s surprised, but dammit. Goddammit. She doesn’t want her family to see this. She doesn’t want to die like this, slow and drawn out. 

Annie takes a knife out of her jacket, a short, thin blade like a razor. “Where’s your boyfriend? Or is he not really all that into you?”

“He’s close,” Miksa lies through gritted teeth. Before she can do anything else, Annie punches her in the throat, cutting off whatever she was going to say. 

“Well then,” Annie says. “He must _really_ not be all that into you, if he’s not here to help.” 

Mikasa’s gasping for breath. Annie leans forward. “Or maybe he is around, and Bertolt’s killing him right now. I asked for you, you know. I thought this would be better girl-to-girl.” She presses the tip of her knife to the corner of Mikasa’s mouth. “I have a few issues with you, you know that, Ackerman? With the tracker-jackers, and my food. I didn’t even get to take all this frustration out on your little ally. What was that sweet little girl’s name? Louise?”

Mikasa’s chest feels like a volcano. She’d bitten her tongue at some point during the fight. She works up a mouthful of blood and spits it into Annie’s face, but the other girl just snarls and presses her knife in harder. 

“Oh, no, princess, that’s not how this is gonna go. I’m gonna kill you, nice and slow, and you’re gonna _sit there,_ all quiet and pretty, until you’re not anymore. Got it?”

Mikasa will be doing no such thing. The comment about Louise filled her with fire. Mikasa might die here, but she will not die peacefully. She tilts her head back and stares Annie dead in the eye. So she doesn’t see Reiner coming until Annie is ripped off of her and slammed into the Cornucopia. 

Reiner looks—he looks—he’s terrifying. He’s just as huge as ever, maybe even bigger, but up close, Mikasa has never seen him anything other than friendly and cheerful. Now, his square, handsome face is a white mask of fury, eyes hard and narrow and teeth bared. 

“Did you kill her?” he roars. “Louise? DID YOU KILL THAT LITTLE GIRL?”

“No!” Annie shrieks, kicking out. Reiner has her pinned to the Cornucopia by the throat, her feet dangling a foot off the ground. Mikasa scrambles backwards on her hands and feet, still struggling to breath. 

“You SAID,” Reiner insists. His knuckles whiten around her throat before he throws her to the ground. “You said her name!”

Annie tries to reach for a knife, but Reiner kicks her with enough force that her arm might’ve broken. Annie screams. “It wasn’t me! It wasn’t me! Reiner, what are you—?!”

Reiner looms over her. “Did you _torture_ her? Like you were about to do to Mikasa?”

“BERTOLT!” Annie screams. “Bert—!”

Bertolt responds with a cry of her name instantly, but Mikasa knows he’s already too late. His voice comes from the west, too far away to save her. Reiner bends over Annie and picks her up like a ragdoll, slamming her once, twice, three times into the side of the Cornucopia. The third time, her skull cracks audibly. Reiner drops her body and it flops to the ground lifelessly. 

He shudders for a minute before rounding on Mikasa. “She was your ally?”

Mikasa nods frantically, too overwhelmed to tell anything but the truth. “I—we teamed up. She helped me blow up the food. I tried to save her, I swear, but I was—I was too late.” Tears spring into her eyes. 

“You avenged her?” he demands.

“Yes, yes,” she says. “And I, I sang her to sleep. And buried her. I buried her in flowers.” Her hand comes up to clutch her scarf. “Can you—can you do it fast?”

But when Mikasa looks up at him, he’s still. He makes no move to pick her up or snap her neck. Instead, he looks away.

“She was a sweet kid,” Reiner says, shaking. He’s shaking. His hand is fisted in his hair. His eyes are very wide and very wild. “She was a good kid, you know? She didn’t—They shouldn’t’ve—” He draws in a deep breath, his shoulders rolling as he does. He’s so _big._ Mikasa trembles.

Reiner points at her, no longer shaking, no longer wild. But he doesn’t grab, doesn’t make any sudden movement. “You did me a solid, blowing up the food. Those inner district kids don’t know how to feed themselves, or how to be hungry. And Louise—” He jabs his finger at her. Mikasa remembers, suddenly, Reiner bench-pressing Louise back at the training center, how Louise had giggled. She wonders if they had known each other. “I’m letting you go for her, do you understand? Just this once, I’ll let you go. For the food, and for Louise. We’re even now, Ackerman.”

Mikasa nods frantically. 

Reiner nods. “Good.” He grabs both remaining packs and swings them over his shoulders. 

_“Annie!”_ Bertolt cries again, so much closer. 

“Time to go, girl on fire,” Reiner says grimly, and then he books it east.

Mikasa doesn’t need to be told twice. She scrambles to her feet and sprints north, not daring to look back. A canon goes off, and she hears a boy’s long wail of grief. She crashes through the woods, finding the stream and running through it. The blood from her forehead keeps blinding her. Her eyes are watering and her head is pounding. She can’t slow down. Bertolt could be on her trail right now. More likely he went after Reiner, who’d stolen his pack and killed his partner, but Mikasa can’t risk it either way. Besides, if she slows down, she might stop, and if she stops . . .

The landscape goes by her in a blur. Her head wound is making her woozy. By some miracle, she makes it back to their cave and squeezes through the opening. Eren is there, pale and pained in the exact position she left him in a few hours ago. Mikasa collapses by his side and rips the little pack open. Inside is a single syringe. Trembling, Mikasa finds the area in his shoulder that she vaguely recalls learning about in health class and stabs the needle in, pushing down the plunger. 

Then she collapses over Eren’s chest and falls unconscious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as goddamn tough as annie is, if a man with a foot of height and a hundred pounds on you gets the drop on you, that's very hard to get out of. rip queen.


	9. down in the valley, the valley so low

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from "The Valley Song" by Suzanne Collins, based of "Down in the Vally" by Lead Belly
> 
> More Eren pov! I love writing this bastard.

When Mikasa finally stirs, Eren has almost completely recovered. 

The sepsis and the swelling are completely gone, and his leg is slowly beginning to knit itself together. He’s keeping it tightly wrapped under bandages for the foreseeable future and walking is still agony, but it’s miles better than he was even yesterday evening when he first woke. His fever is gone and much of his strength is back. He’s going to survive this wound. 

He’s able to be grateful.

Mikasa whines in her sleep, turning her bandaged forehead into the sleeping bag. Eren had braided her bangs out of her face before he washed and bandaged the awful cut on her forehead. She looks different with her bangs pulled to the side in a thin little braid. Younger, somehow. When they were kids, sometimes somebody would clip her bangs out of her face for special occasions. Maybe that’s what it is. 

“Hey,” Eren says, lightly shaking the hand on her shoulder. “You’re up?”

She cracks her eyes open. “Mm. So are you. Do you . . . ?”

“I feel great,” he answers, giving her a little smile. “Those Mitras drugs—” he whistles. “Strong stuff.”

Mikasa nods. “How long . . . ?”

He hands her a water bottle, which she drinks from readily. “About a day and a half, I think. I woke up yesterday evening with you bleeding all over me in time to see Annie in the sky. It’s somewhere around noon.”

“Hard to tell,” she says, glancing around them. 

“Ah, yeah. It’s been pouring since last night.” The cave is mostly decent cover. The thick layer of pine needles has kept the tiny waves that roll in from getting their bodies wet, and Eren was mostly able to fix the few cracks in the ceiling by wedging Mikasa’s weird plastic sheet thing into them. But the air is still heavy and wet and freezing. Mikasa’s boots and socks, which had been soaked when he woke up and pulled them off, are still soggy. 

Mikasa struggles to sit up from where she was curled on her side. She manages to get halfway upright before her arms give out. Eren catches her and hauls her up so that she’s leaned against him, still snug in her sleeping bag. “Easy there,” he tells her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “You’re still recovering from blood loss.”

Eren should know. He’d woken up yesterday, still groggy from her _fucking drugging him_ (he hasn’t forgotten about that) and nearly gone into cardiac arrest because Mikasa Ackerman was slumped over his chest, having bled at least a liter of blood onto his jacket. He’s since stripped it off and is letting the rain wash it, as best it can. 

“But you’re really feeling better?” she insists. 

“A hundred percent. Or at least ninety-five. I promise. And you—even if you gave me a _goddamn heart attack_ when I woke up covered in your blood—should be fine, too. We should get some food in you.” He leans forward and grabs his backpack, rooting through it.

Mikasa lifts her hand and fingers the bandage on her forehead, then finds and traces the little braid. He can tell she’s hiding a small smile as she says, “I’m sorry for scaring you.”

“I’ll let it go,” he says shortly. _For now._ He’s definitely going to yell at her for drugging him and then nearly getting herself killed, but even his bedside manner isn’t poor enough to start shouting at his weak, woozy patient. (Slash, um, girlfriend? Maybe? They need to talk about what, exactly, is going on with them. There hasn’t been a lot of time, but he’s positive he didn’t hallucinate her kissing him all those times.) He hands her a pack of dried fruit and leans back. “What happened?”

“Annie. We fought at the Cornucopia.”

Eren huffs and tightens his fingers around her shoulder. “I thought as much. You killed her, then?”

“No,” she says. “Reiner did. She said something about Louise, and Reiner was there and he heard, and he ripped Annie off of me and broke her skull against the Cornucopia.”

Louise? Like, the little girl from Trost? Eren had seen her in the sky a few days ago. The hell did she have to do with anything? “And,” he says, “you’re still alive?”

She nods, then winces and squeezes her eyes shut against painful dizziness. “Um. He asked about Louise. We teamed up, do you remember me telling you that? I told Reiner that we’d been allies, that she helped me blow up the food. That I tried to save her and sang her to sleep and buried her. He let me go for her. But we’re even now. He won’t do that again.”

“. . . Shit.” Eren does _not_ like that Mikasa had two powerful enemies on her at once, and is only still alive because Reiner had a soft spot for kids. Eren had kind of liked Reiner, when he let himself stop focusing. The older boy is from the outer districts like him, and he’d had the energy of a cool older brother. Eren can easily see that he let Mikasa live because she had been a friend to his district partner, but that doesn’t mean he’s not about to have heart palpitations. 

The things this girl does to him, he swears. 

Then another bit of information catches up with him. “Wait, did you say you blew up the food?”

“Oh. Yeah,” Mikasa says. “I guess you were with them to see the trap set up? I was able to shoot a bag of apples open and set off all the mines at once. Louise lured them away from camp so that I had the opportunity to.” Her hand floats up to the pin on her jacket. 

Eren just shakes his head, slightly awed. _The things this girl does to him._ “You’re incredible, you know that? I could kiss you,” he says, echoing what he’d said when she shot at the Gamemakers. 

Mikasa raises her eyebrows a little. “Mm, you could.”

He grins and presses a feather-soft kiss to her temple. “I’ll take a rain check on that, for when you’re not half-asleep from blood loss,” he says, lips moving on her skin. Mikasa blushes and begins to eat quietly, not quite managing to look at him. 

After a few minutes, which Eren spends riding the high of having _made Mikasa Ackerman blush,_ she begins to nod off again. She’s visibly trying to keep awake, but after a few minutes Eren tugs her head down onto his lap and tells her to sleep. “You let me take care of you for a change, alright?” he says. “I’ve got you.”

“Alright,” she mumbles. 

As he did before, Eren strokes her hair. His mom used to do this for him wherever he got sick as a kid, and sometimes his dad does it for their patients, especially kids. Eren has never quite felt like he had the right to try and soothe people like this, but it’s different. With Mikasa it’s different. 

She wakes up again a few hours later, looking much more alert this time. Just in time—he’s getting hungry. He hasn’t eaten since last night. They’re running low on food, and he hadn’t been willing to eat without her. 

“Let’s go ahead and finish off my stuff,” she says. “The bird won’t keep much longer anyway.”

“We can get more tomorrow,” Eren offers. 

“Right. Can you hunt?”

He shrugs. “I can cook and gather, if you’re not in the mood to give me any lessons.” They scarf down the remains of the food: a few bites of groosling, and a handful of assorted greens and berries. They still have half a sleeve of crackers and a pack of dried fruit, but Mikasa isn’t willing to eat all their rations quite yet. He remembers her at nine, so thin that a gust of wind could have knocked her down, and doesn’t press.

When the anthem plays some time later, it’s almost hard to hear over the steady drumming of the rain. They sit side-to-side on the sleeping bag, peering out the exit to see the sky. The crest of Paradis is hard to make out, but they’re able to tell that no one had died today. 

“I wonder what the point of this fucking rain is,” he grumbles. “Everyone with a single brain cell will just be hiding out.”

Mikasa raises her eyebrows at him. She looks unimpressed, and Eren wonders what he possibly could have done. “It’s probably for Bertolt and Reiner,” she says. “Hitch must have a hideout, and we’re here. Speaking of Reiner, what’s to the east of the Cornucopia? That’s where he headed.”

Eren waves his hand in a vague circle. “It’s this giant field, grasses up to my shoulders. I think some of them are probably grain, but I have no way of knowing. No one was willing to go hunting there. Afraid of snakes and quicksand and what-the-fuck-ever. But I bet Reiner knows how to navigate it.”

“He would be able to tell what’s grain,” she says. “I guess that’s why he looks even bigger than when he came into the arena.”

“Either that or he’s got some great sponsors. Wonder what we’d have to do to get a hot meal.”

Mikasa stares hard at him for a moment before she cocks her head and smirks. “Well,” she says. “Hannes probably used up a lot of our resources helping me knock you out.”

Anger sparks in Eren’s chest. “Oh, okay, so we’re doing this now.”

Mikasa opens her mouth, but Eren doesn’t give her time to speak. “You _cannot_ do anything like that _ever_ again. Do you understand me?”

Mikasa has the audacity to just look amused. “Or?”

“Or—I’ll—” He hadn’t actually thought about this conversation at all. He doesn’t have a good threat. He settles for scowling at her. “Look. We both survived, so I get that you think you did the right thing, but—”

“I _did_ do the right thing,” she says, entirely too self-satisfied. Eren grabs her by the wrists and digs his fingers in when she looks alarmed. 

He _needs_ her to understand this. There’s no way for him to put into words the awful, white-knuckled terror that seized him when he’d woken up covered in her blood, but he tries to get it through her thick head when he says, “You _cannot_ die for me. You don’t get to do that to me. If you die—if you leave me alone here—I’m not going back without you. Do you understand? So you have to be _safe.”_

Mikasa blinks, mouth parting, before she swallows and stammers, “Maybe I . . . maybe I didn’t do it for _you,_ Eren. You’re not the only one who—who’s worried—” 

Eren’s heart pounds in his ears, but it’s not anything close to anger anymore. Mikasa Ackerman is in front of him, blushing and stuttering and willing to risk her life for him. He could let her continue to try to give him an answer, could watch her struggle to put her feelings into words, but it’s a lot more satisfying to just kiss her.

Eren had kissed exactly three girls before the Games. He’d gone to a lot of the class parties by the slag heap, mostly hoping that Mikasa would show up— and sometimes Historia did drag her there and she would spend the whole time standing off to the side, hiding in his scarf— and that he would work up the nerve to talk to her. He never did, but there was always contraband liquor and his pent-up sexual frustration had to go somewhere. He’s just lucky he never called one of those girls Mikasa while they were making out. 

Kissing Mikasa is not like kissing one of those other girls. And yes, he’s kissed her a few times in the past few days, but. That was really more her kissing him, and they were all relatively chaste, seeing as he was dying at the time. He’s not dying now. Now, Mikasa’s lips part under his and he pulls her against him, hands on her neck, under his old scarf. Now, her hands, callused and tough and smaller than he would have thought, flit up to his shoulders and curl into the fabric there, holding him close. Now, Mikasa makes a little noise in the back of her throat, and Eren wants to hear that again, right now, right now, again and again. 

He tilts his head to get a better angle and Mikasa sighs. Her mouth is a little clumsy, her hands a little tentative, but that’s okay, it’s perfect, she’s adorable and gorgeous and perfect and he’s wanted to kiss her for nearly as long as he can remember. When he was five he wanted to kiss her in the meadow at their wedding; when he was ten he wanted to kiss her on his doorstep they way his parents would when his father left for a call; when he was fifteen he wanted to kiss her against the wall of the abandoned plant by the slag heap. Three weeks ago he’d been in class daydreaming about making out Mikasa Ackerman, two weeks ago he’d been on a rooftop a second away from kissing her just so he'd know how it felt before he died, a week ago he’d dreamed about Mikasa singing to children he knew they would never, ever have, and now—

—and now she’s leaning into him, matching his movements. This beautiful, wonderful, awesome girl nearly died for him. Eren could kiss her for years, could kiss her forever, and Mikasa doesn’t seem to have any arguments. She drapes her arms over his shoulders and meets his mouth with equal fervor, leaning into him. He’s still kind of mad at her, so he bites at her bottom lip. She makes another little noise and wraps her arms fully around his neck, leaning even closer to him until she’s pressed against his chest. Eren grabs her by the waist and lifts her up and onto his lap, settling her knees on either side of his hips. She gasps, and he takes the opportunity to shove his tongue into her mouth. She shifts on his lap and tentatively probs his tongue with her own, and the kiss is _wet,_ now, her mouth is wet, and her forehead is—

Eren forces himself to pull away and curses. Mikasa blindly chases after his mouth, and he _really_ wants to be a bad doctor right now, but— “Shit. You’re bleeding,” he says, holding her off. There’s a line of red seeping fast through the bandage on her forehead. “You’re—you’ve gotta lie down, babe, or you might pass out.”

The look of disappointment on her face is almost worth it. She slumps down onto him, face tucked in his shoulder. “You’re terrible,” she mumbles.

He laughs shakily, running a hand through his hair. “Trust me, I’m _way_ more upset by that than you are.”

But he’s not actually upset at all. He’s far, far too happy for that. It’s wet and cold and miserable, and he presses his smile into Mikasa’s hair and they stay there, just like that, for a long while. 

Eventually, he pokes her up so he can change her bandage. Her cut is fine, the bleeding has already stopped. He should probably feel guilty for opening it again, but he’s too pleased with himself for getting her heart to beat that fast. 

“I’ll take first watch,” he says. Mikasa looks at him flatly. 

“Eren, I slept nearly all day. I’ll take the first watch.”

“I’m fine. You’re still recovering.”

“So are you. I might not be the doctor, but even I know that you don’t go from death’s door to one-hundred-percent fine in two days.”

. . . He can’t actually argue with that. “Alright, fine. But it’s dropping down towards freezing, we should probably both be in the sleeping bag.”

That wasn’t subtle at all, but Mikasa lets it pass by unremarked. They crawl into the bag together. He has some vague memory of them sharing before, but he was delirious with fever then. Now, he’s fully aware of Mikasa’s long, hard body pressed against him in the sleeping bag meant for one. Even though she’s keeping watch, he pulls her half on top of him so use his chest as a pillow and wraps his arms around her. 

If she falls asleep . . . It’s not like anyone’s going to find them in this weather, anyway. 

She puts on her night-vision glasses and folds her arms on his chest. Eren drifts off for a few hours. Despite everything, it’s the best sleep of his life. 

She wakes him up for his shift, putting the glasses over his eyes and immediately falling asleep, her arms folded under her head. Eren keeps a lazy watch over her, listening to the weather worsen outside. 

Morning comes, eventually, but nothing really changes. The rain is so intense that water rushes past the cave in a hurried stream, and they can’t see a thing outside. Thunder booms every few minutes, so loud the ground quakes. They finish the sleeve of crackers between them in the morning, afraid the water will ruin them. A few hours later they split the last pack of dried fruit. They’re still hungry. Eren has half a mind to go out and forage, but Mikasa tells him he’d just catch a cold and likely wouldn’t find anything, anyway. 

The day passes in a cold gray haze. Mikasa is pressed against his side for the entirety of it, which is a shining bright spot, but both of them are shivering in the cold and weak from recovering from their injuries. They talk a little, but neither of them is particularly in the mood for it. They nap on and off. The only thing he really does is play with Mikasa’s hair, weaving and unweaving little braids. The short hair really does suit her. 

By evening, they’re chilled to the bone and famished. He’s about to resign himself to a cold, hungry night, when all of the sudden Mikasa says, “Eren. In your interview, you said you’d had a crush on me forever.”

He nods, holding back a yawn. “Yeah.”

He hears her sigh and looks over at her. She’s giving him this flat look, amusement buried somewhere under exasperation. It’s a cute look on her. “Okay,” she says. “I was just wondering when forever started.”

“Oh, yeah.” He sits up a little straighter. “Literally the first time I saw you.”

She blinks at him. “When was that?”

 _Oh._ She wants to hear the story. That’s fair. He’d like to hear her perspective on their relationship. And it’s not like there’s any reason to be embarrassed. She made out with him on national television. After eleven years and multiple near-death experiences on both of their parts, Mikasa Ackerman finally likes him back. 

Worth it.

He tugs her down so that her head is on his shoulder. She lets him, looking at him with wide gray eyes, trusting and so lovely it makes his heart ache. “First day of kindergarten,” he answers. “We were all lining up to check in. You were with Levi. You had on this pale pink dress with shiny buttons, and your hair was tied with blue ribbons. I pointed you out to Zeke, and you know what he said? ‘Her brother stole my girlfriend.’”

Mikasa exhales sharply, somewhere between laughing and offended. “He did not!”

Eren grins. “It’s true! Sorry, Zeke, if you’re watching this. But seriously. Zeke and Petra used to go out.” As Eren understood, Zeke and Petra had been going steady when they were fifteen before Petra left him for Levi, two weeks before he was reaped.

She hums. “I didn’t know that.”

He shrugs. “No reason why she would have brought it up. Anyway, I said, ‘what? How did he steal her?’ And he said, ‘When that bastard sings, even the birds stop and listen.’”

“That’s true,” she says. “They do. They did.”

He nods. “So I was already paying attention to you, right? Because you were the prettiest girl I’d ever seen and because of what my brother said and because I’d heard other kids say that your brother won the Hunger Games. And that day, in music class, the teacher asked who knew the valley song.” He grabs a piece of her hair, twirling it around his finger. He remembers these moments like they were yesterday—tiny Mikasa with her chubby cheeks and skinned knees, the sunlight shining off her hair, the birdsong through the open widow and the way it stopped nearly all at once. “Your hand shot straight up. She made you sing on a stool and sing it for the class. And I swear, every bird outside shut right up.”

She shakes her head. “They did not.”

“I’m telling you, they did. And right then, right there, just like your sister-in-law, I was in love.”

And he had been. Eren had gone home that day and announced that he was going to marry Mikasa Ackerman when he grew up. His parents had smiled indulgently, and Zeke had laughed and told him to set his sights on someone more realistic. If anything, that had only made him more determined. 

. . . Not determined enough to ever actually _talk_ to her, though.

Mikasa smiles and tucks it into the scarf, dropping her forehead against his chest. He can feel her throat working where his hand rests on her neck; he wonders what she’s trying to say. Eventually, what comes out is, “. . . You’ve got a very good memory.”

“I remember everything,” he says. “That’s really just the beginning, you know. I don’t just love you because you can sing, or ‘cause you’re pretty. You’re the strongest person that I’ve ever met. The way you handled your brother’s death, the way you take care of your family, hell, the way you’re taking care of me, right now. You’re the most—”

He’s cut off as Mikasa pushes herself up, fists her hands in his collar, and smashes her mouth to his. He makes a muffled sound and moves his hand to cup her jaw. She opens her lips under his, and Eren is willing to chance her head wound reopening for another makeout session when there’s a clatter from outside. 

Before he can register what happened, Mikasa has lunged for her bow and drawn it up, ready to shoot. But no more sound comes from outside. Hesitantly, Eren pushes her back and pokes his head out. He gives a cheer and crawls half-out of the cave to grab the basket attached to the parachute that’s just come down. He comes back in, soaked and grinning, and says, “Look what Hannes sent us!”

***

The basket Hannes sent them is full of rolls with goat cheese and honey, apples, a tureen of beef stew. She moans happily at the sight, and Eren grabs her face and kisses her, still grinning.

“We should eat it while it’s warm,” she gasps when she pulls away. Eren makes a little noise and goes in again, but Mikasa pushes against his chest and he leans back with a grunt. 

“You’re mean to me,” he says.

Her face warms. Her heart, reeling from their conversation, feels like a buoy in a hurricane--light, but so unsteady. “You’re silly,” she mutters. 

“Mm, but you like it.”

He settles back next to her on the cave wall, and she drops her forehead on his shoulder while he prepares them each a plate. _Plates._ And silverware, too. This basket must have cost no small fortune even to Mitras people. They must be buying the star-crossed-lovers act hook, line, and sinker.

She can’t blame them, really. Eren is so convincing he almost has _her_ tricked sometimes.

“We shouldn’t eat too much,” he says regretfully. The plate he hands her has a single roll smeared with goat cheese and half an apple. “Remember the first night on the train? We nearly got sick then and we weren’t weak and on completely empty stomachs.”

Mikasa accepts this. Eren allows them each a few sips of stew as well. They wolf it down, too hungry to go slow, and in a few minutes they’re both eyeing the rest of the basket. 

“If this stays down for an hour,” he says, “and we’re still hungry, then we can eat a second serving.”

“Okay.” She resists the urge to touch the basket longingly. “It’ll be a long hour.”

 _“Well,”_ Eren says. When she turns to him, he’s grinning. “I’m sure we can find _some_ way to pass the time . . .”

Mikasa smacks him lightly. Those couple of intense kisses had been . . . they’d been—good, and great for getting sponsors, she’s sure, but they’re on _television._ Her seven-year-old nephew is watching this, and so are his parents, and, lest they forget, the entire rest of the country. 

Eren laughs it off. “Okay, okay. But hey, you got my side of the story. What about you?”

She blinks. “Huh? What about me?”

He gestures vaguely. “Well, you obviously didn’t like me like _this_ going into the Games. But you seem on board now, so. What changed?”

 _Why would he ask that?!?!_ Mikasa doesn’t have a good answer! She thought the story they were going with was that they’d _both_ been secretly in love before the Games! _Why would he throw a wrench in that?!_

Panicking slightly and hoping the audience will mistake it for embarrassment, she says, “What—what do you mean _obviously?_ Eren, I didn’t wear your scarf for seven years because I _didn’t_ like you.”

His mouth falls open. “What? I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought, really. I figured you were just cold all the time.”

She makes a face at him. _What?_ “I mean, I didn’t . . . I don’t think I was pining after you all this time, or anything. But you . . . you’ve always meant a lot to me. This scarf has always meant a lot to me. That’s why I wear it. It’s . . . it always reminds me that there’s hope. You saved my life that day, you know that, right? And my sister’s and my niece’s and nephew’s lives.”

If Eren gets to use the truth to lie, then so does she. Except—well, she didn’t lie at all there, did she? She hasn’t been secretly in love with Eren since she was nine, and she wears his scarf because it’s a comfort, because it represents hope. But if she wasn’t supposed to be in love until recently . . . it’s believable, isn’t it?

His ears turn red. “Yeah. Don’t mention it.”

She sighs, exasperated. He’s already uncomfortable with the mention of that day. “Why don’t you ever want me to talk about that? Even when we were kids, you didn't let me thank you.”

He scratches the back of his head. “Well, when we were kids, I was pretty sure that if you spoke directly to me I might combust.”

“Huh?”

“I had a crush the size of the _moon_ on you, Mikasa, and you’re painfully pretty and also kind of terrifying. You know that you’re pretty intimidating, right?”

“It’s been said.”

“Right. Not to mention when we were little I was absolutely terrified of your brother. Zeke told me some horror stories that, looking back, were complete horseshit. And then, after the scarf thing—I think I was afraid that you would feel . . . indebted to me? I never expected anything from you. I mean, I definitely _wanted_ things from you, but I didn’t want to have a relationship based on the one time I saved you.”

Mikasa bites her lip. “Well, now we have a relationship based on us saving each others’ lives multiple times.”

He snickers. “I think we’re playing these Games all wrong, don’t you?”

“We might be. I—I like it, though.”

He wraps an arm around her. “I like it, too.” 

Mikasa takes his hand and drops her head on his shoulder. She thinks they’ve done enough for the cameras today. If they can have a peaceful night with full bellies, she’ll count the day as a total win. 

“Just so we’re clear,” Eren says a few minutes later, “I _was_ gonna talk to you eventually.”

She smiles. “Oh?”

He nods. “Yeah. I had it all planned out. I was gonna wait until after we were out of the reaping. Like a gentleman. And then just—ask you out. I was gonna talk to you about gathering some of our medicinal herbs and then ask if you wanted to get dinner. See how that went. Hopefully you’d like me well enough that I could lure you into town. And then, if you didn’t dump me, after a few months . . . y’know. For the low price of looking at my ugly mug everyday, you could be the doctor’s wife. I’d be able to take good care of you and your family and our children.”

Her heartbeat pounds in her ears. “Not a bad deal,” she manages to say. 

“My thoughts exactly.” He pecks her on the nose. 

“I don’t know if I have the stomach to be a doctor’s wife,” she blurts. A bad thing to say, maybe, but she _needs_ some distance from this moment. Eren doesn’t actually mean any of this, and she needs to remember that. There’s no world out there where they never stood on that stage together, where one day she could have been the next Mrs. Doctor Jaeger. 

Because—if he had asked her out, she’s almost sure she would have said yes. And they’re not in love, they’re just pretending, and Mikasa isn’t sure she ever wants to get married and risk bringing children into this cruel world where they could be reaped like Izzy, where they could die like Louise. 

“Well, you won’t be,” Eren says. “If we make it back, we’ll be Victors.”

“That’s right.” She lets out a relieved half-laugh, grateful for the subject change. “What are we going to do with all that time?”

He grins. “Oh, I’m sure we’ll find something.”

Mikasa rolls her eyes. “You’ve made that joke twice now, and it’s still not funny.”

“It’s funny that you think I’m joking.” 

Mikasa turns fully into his shoulder, her whole face bright red. Eren laughs and takes mercy on her. 

“Hey, for real. What are you gonna do when we get back?”

“Hug my family,” she tells his collar. “And then . . . God. I guess I’d move back to Victor’s Village. Do you think they’d give me the same house?”

He shrugs. “I don’t see why not.”

“They’re all the same layout, anyway. At least, ours and Hannes’s were.” She shakes her head, facing the world again. She’d never considered that.

“Oh God, we’ll be neighbors with Hannes.” 

Mikasa laughs, and Eren grins at her. He really is very handsome. He knocks her shoulder. “Well, come on. Tell me about them, Village girl.”

She leans back against the cave wall. “There are four floors. We had eight bedrooms. Two of them had their own bathrooms. The kitchen and living room were enormous.” She thinks about what that life was like. What did she do all day? She’d gone to school and come back to do her homework on marble countertops. They’d eaten dinner at a table with too many seats, the four of them crowded down at one end, Izzy in a booster seat. Levi and Petra used to hold hands on the table. 

Their bedroom had been down the hall from hers. When she had nightmares or felt lonely or sad or sick, she would crawl into their bed and sleep between them. Levi was nearly always awake already, and he would stroke her hair and sing her lullabies very quietly. Their quilts had been patterned with sunflowers. 

Mikasa wonders if those quilts are still there. Had they come with the house? Or had someone—Petra, or maybe even Mikasa’s mother—bought them and put them there to brighten up the room?

Eren pokes her cheek. “You got lost,” he says. Mikasa hums an apology. 

“I’m sure you’ll get lost a couple times,” she says. “They’re very big houses.”

“Sounds great.” He stretches. “My mom will like the kitchen, I’m sure.”

“I’m sure,” she agrees. A thought strikes her. “You know, your mom said goodbye to me after the reaping.”

Eren jolts. “She what?”

“Mhm.”

“Wh-what did she _say?!”_

He’s a lot more surprised than she thought he’d be. “That, um, she would watch out for my niece and nephew. That my brother and sister were good people.”

“Is that all?” he demands. 

Mikasa thinks back to that conversation. It feels like it was so long ago. “Um. She said something about us both being good kids, and then that any woman would be proud to call me her daughter.”

“Holy shit,” Eren exhales. He’s flushed red and scowling intensely. 

“What?”

He puts his face in his hands. 

_“Eren?”_

“I cannot believe,” he says, “That my _mom_ just about proposed to you for me. As we were _going into the Hunger Games together.”_

She blinks. “Wait, what?”

He groans. “She always knew about my stupid crush on you, she’s always teased me about it, asking why I wouldn’t talk to you. Especially because, you know, you were always wearing my scarf whenever you came around.” He pulls his hands across his face, still blushing.

“Wait—” Mikasa’s face heats, too. “Are you saying that your mom was telling me that . . . what, she would have liked me for a daughter-in-law?”

He nods dourly. “Yeah. She was always complaining that—well. That I was . . . nevergonnagivehergrandkidsatthisrate.”

She sputters. “What?” 

“God, nothing. Let’s stop talking about this.”

She agrees immediately, even though she’s sure the audience is mourning. They sit in silence for a while, and Eren slowly grows less rigid. He takes a lock of her hair and winds it around his finger, and Mikasa drops her head on his shoulder. The cameras will think it’s a sweet moment, not to mention how much fun the commentators must be having at their expense right now. 

Mikasa has no idea what to make of their talk. First the story about their first day of school, and now this? Had Eren had this idea from the very, very beginning, asked his mother to play into it? Why? On the off-chance that she brought up his mother saying goodbye to her? Had Eren just taken Carla’s words and spun them to fit their narrative? Or . . . or had he meant it? But if he was telling the truth, then . . . Had he meant _all_ of it? 

_How_ could he have meant all of it? 

He can’t. Eren is just being clever, weaving a random example of his mother’s kindness into their great lie. He has to be. He didn’t fall in love on the first day of kindergarten, he didn’t throw her the bread in his scarf because he loved her, and he never planned to ask her out when they were out of the reaping. 

She might have said yes, if he had. But he never would have. 

Another parachute lands at the entrance of their cave, and Eren exclaims, “Nice,” kisses her temple, and untangles from her to crawl up to get it. Mikasa misses his warmth, the solid presence of his chest, so intensely for those few moments that it actually scares her. 

What _is_ going to happen to them, if they make it back home? This boy with beautiful eyes and a habit of saving her life. This boy that she always thought was the most earnest person she’d ever seen, but can lie well enough to fool the whole world. Even her, at moments, and she’s in on it. This boy, whose unprovoked kindness had saved her life and touched her soul, who had tackled another boy to the floor and stabbed him again and again until he stopped fighting back.

 _We’ll be friends,_ she thinks hesitantly. You didn’t survive what they had survived together without being friends. Hasn’t she always wanted to be Eren Jaeger’s friend? 

“Babe!” he exclaims, laughter in his voice. He shakes off rain like a puppy as he slides back to her, grinning like he’s never been happier. “Look, look what Hannes sent you!”

He thrusts an opened bowl, still attached to the parachute, at her, and Mikasa shoots up on her knees, deathly serious. It’s the pudding. The chocolate pudding that she mentioned in the interview. 

Mikasa throws her arms around Eren’s neck. “Oh, my God,” she says. “Oh my God. Eren.”

He sets the bowl and the lid, in his other hand, down so he can hug her back. “Are you up for dessert?” he asks, laughing.

“Mm. Can we have our second helping now?”

“I don’t feel sick. Do you?”

When she says no, he pulls away and starts making their second plates. Mikasa helps, placing the lid back on the pudding to save for later and cutting the apple. The anthem plays while they’re getting ready, but Mikasa ignores it. They never heard any canons. Eren peers out at the sky, though, and says, “Mikasa. Bertolt is dead.”

She drops the knife with a clatter. “What?”

She whips around to look at the sky—and sure enough. There he is. So distorted by the downpour that he’s hardly recognizable, but it’s Bertolt Hoover. District of Orvud. 

Mikasa slumps back against the wall, all her excitement gone. “Oh,” she says. “Well, that’s good, right?”

Eren is looking at her carefully. “I think so. One less opponent for us. And I’ll bet Reiner’s injured. Bertolt wouldn’t have been an easy opponent.”

“You’re right,” she says. This is good. Reiner and her are even. And she supposes, if she and Eren can’t win, then she would prefer Reiner over Hitch. He let her go. And Louise. Louise’s family would benefit if Reiner won. “Four of us left,” she murmurs. 

“Two on one on one.” Eren takes her hand. “I like those odds, Mikasa Ackerman.”

She wraps both her hands over his and squeezes. “Me, too.”

The rest of the night is quiet. They eat their second helping, and have a spoonful of pudding each for dessert. She does feel a little queasy afterward, so she doesn’t push for more. They settle into the sleeping bag and Mikasa offers to take the first watch. Eren agrees, but he wraps himself around her defensively before kissing her goodnight. 

The night is quiet, even if Mikasa’s thoughts are not. Her head spins around in circles of _if we're lying, why is he telling the truth_ and _is it better or worse that it’s Reiner and not Bertolt._ Even when Eren wakes up for his watch, she has a hard time falling asleep. When she finally does, she dreams that she’s trying to run--from or to something she doesn’t know--but her scarf is tied around her wrist and to a tree, keeping her trapped. 

She wakes in the morning to the absence of rain. “It stopped all at once a few hours ago,” Eren tells her. “G’morning. I fixed breakfast.” He hands her a roll drizzled with honey and topped with tiny apple slices.

“You’re the best,” she says. Mikasa pushes her bangs out of her eyes, somehow feeling like that was the wrong thing to say. 

When they’re done, Eren says, “So. Hunting day today, right?”

“Right,” Mikasa says. They pack up their supplies and the remains of the feast—four rolls, two apples, a large glob of cheese, a pot of honey, a third of the thermos of stew, and most of the pudding. There’s no pressing need to go hunting, but they can’t stay in their cave forever. Even if the idea doesn’t sound all that bad. 

Almost as soon as they step out of the cave, Mikasa wishes they _could_ stay inside forever. With the world opened wide around them, lit by a bright, oppressively hot sun, Mikasa immediately loses any sense of safety that she’d had. She feels like prey again. It reminds her, suddenly and almost with more potency than she can bear, of being nine years old again, alone in the woods after Levi died. When she was just a little girl in a big forest full of big predators. 

But then Eren puts a hand low on her back, comforting. She’s not alone. Impulsively, she turns to him and presses a kiss to the corner of his jaw. 

When she was nine, Eren Jaeger’s scarf around her neck had been enough to inspire her to action. Now she has all of him, and she feels brave. 

“Reiner will be hunting us,” Eren says, lips high against her cheek. “Even if he’s wounded, he’s coming.”

“We can take him. We’re strong.”

She hears the smile in his voice. “Yeah. I’ve got you and you’ve got me, right?”

“Right.”

They end up having to go back into the forest, where game actually travels. They walk along the rocks so as not to leave a trail. She’d like to walk in the river, but it becomes clear soon that Eren is not, in fact, fully recovered. His infection is gone and his leg is healing well, the muscle in his calf was still ripped in half. He can walk alright, but only slowly. It’s not so bad. He says the exercise is good for him, and he looks happy enough with his sword in one hand and her hand in the other. Mikasa is fine to be walking hand-in-hand. Eren is listening for the both of them, anyway. It’s clear now that whatever the explosion did to her left ear, it was permanent. 

After about an hour and a half, they get back into the forest proper. Mikasa drops Eren’s hand and pulls up her drawn bow. She feels much better with the comfort of the forest around her. Only a few steps in, though, she’s wincing. 

“Eren,” she says, turning to look at him. “Could you try to walk a little more quietly, please?” He blinks at her. “You’re . . .” she tries to put it kindly. “You’re pretty loud. You’ll chase away the animals.”

He grimaces. “Sorry.”

He follows after her, clearly making an effort, but it still sounds like he’s stomping his feet. She shouldn’t be surprised. Eren Jaeger has never been quiet in his life. Several minutes pass with the forest dead around them, and she’s about to suggest they both take off their shoes when he says, “Hey, Mikasa. I’m not gonna be able to be quiet on this leg. Why don’t you show me some stuff to pick while you go and hunt?”

She fidgets with her scarf. “I don’t know that I want to leave you . . .”

He rolls his eyes. “Mikasa, I’m _fine._ I can handle myself. I killed Marcel, didn’t I?”

“. . . Yes . . .”

He twirls his sword. “I’ll be fine. And it’s not like you’ll go far, right?”

Mikasa sighs and relents. She points some roots out for him and says, “I want you to signal me every few minutes, okay? The mockingjays will carry our messages for us.” She whistles two notes that ring through the woods instantly. Eren smiles at her, soft, and repeats the whistle. The mockingjays repeat his copy, just not as many or as enthusiastically. 

He flicks her hair on his way to the roots, fond. “Look at you, queen of the mockingjays.”

Mikasa walks maybe thirty yards from Eren on silent, practiced feet, and the forest seems to come alive. She shoots a squirrel in just a few minutes. As she and Eren continue to signal back and forth, she relaxes some, wanders farther. Soon, she has another squirrel and a fat rabbit. It’s enough, she decides. They’ll have whatever Eren’s gathered and the remains of the feast. They’re in no danger of going hungry for now. 

She whistles, slinging her last kill into her backpack. When fifteen seconds go by without a response, her heart stutters. She notches an arrow and sprints back to where she left Eren—and he’s gone. There’s a pile of roots, and the basket with the rest of their feast, but Eren is gone. He’s gone. Her heart beats rabbit-fast in her chest. “Eren!" she screams. _“Eren!” Louise,_ she thinks. _I can’t, I can’t, I can’t do that again, I can’t bury Eren, I can’t—_

She hears a rustle from behind her and nearly shoots her ally through the eye. She recognizes him in the last split-second and jerks the arrow just to the left of him. 

“What the fuck?” he says, before Mikasa almost tackles him with a hug.

“You _scared_ me!” she yells. No sense in being quiet now, she already blew that. She’s done that twice now—cried Eren’s name for everyone to hear. “You were supposed to be here! You didn’t signal back to me! I thought—I thought—” she buries her face in his shoulder. 

“Hey,” he says. “C’mon, I’m fine.”

“I didn’t know that! You didn’t signal me, you jackass!” 

“Babe,” he says. She can tell she’s kind of annoyed him, but he really has no right to be. He got so worried when she even considered putting herself in danger. “I found some berries by the stream. I guess it was too loud to hear you. I’m sorry.”

She whacks him on the shoulder before pulling away. Now that her relief has abated, she’s annoyed with him—for worrying her, for being annoyed at her concern. 

“Stay in range next time,” she snaps. She yanks the arrow she nearly shot into him out of the tree. “I shot enough for us, we can head back now.” 

She turns back and spots the little spread he’d made of their food and notices that there’s a glob of cheese missing. “Did you eat without me?” she asks, sharp. She’s torn halfway between wanting to be angry at him for something else and being worried that he’s feeling weak and hasn’t told her. 

“No?” he says. 

She points. “Then what ate the cheese?”

He throws his hands up wide, exasperated. “One of the game animals that came by when I wasn’t scaring them all away? Since I was gathering berries. Here,” he presents a fistful. “Would you like some, _dear?”_

Mikasa would, actually. She needs to make nice with Eren. If all their sweetness disappears, what will the sponsors think? And anyway, she doesn’t want to fight with him. “Yes, please,” she says. “Let me see them.”

She scoops a few out of his hand and examines them. She doesn’t recognize them, and it’s generally not a good idea to eat any berries you don’t recognize . . . But—actually, she does. 

_“Oi, teacake. Take a good look at these.”_ Levi’s voice echoes through her head. _“I don’t want you to ever even touch them, you hear me? They’re the fastest damn poison I know. One berry and you’re dead before it hits your stomach.”_

Mikasa drops the few she’s holding and wipes her hand on her shirt. At that moment, a canon fires. She looks up in horror, expecting Eren to fall dead at her feet, but he just tenses and draws his sword. 

Not a hundred yards away, a hovercraft appears and picks up Hitch’s body. Mikasa’s mouth goes dry. The cheese . . . 

Eren steps in front of her and throws his arms out wide, backing her toward a tree. “Climb,” he snarls over his shoulder. “He’ll be here any second, you need to get up a tree—”

“Hey, hey,” she says, putting her hands on his shoulders. “Hey, Eren, no, it’s okay, that wasn’t Reiner. That wasn’t Reiner. She’s your kill.”

“What the fuck,” he half-shouts. He spins around, confused and angry. 

She points to the berries, now lying scattered around the forest floor. Her heart is still pounding a mile a minute. These past two minutes have almost been funny, if you thought about it. “Those are called nightlock,” she says. “They’re poison. She must have seen you gathering them and figured they were safe.”

Eren goes wide-eyed and says, meaningfully, “Shit.”

“She ate our cheese, too.” Mikasa stares at the sky, where Hitch’s body had been drawn up. “She’d been stealing the Careers' food, before I blew it up. Guess that was her strategy.”

 _“It blew up,”_ he tries to joke, but he looks almost nauseous. “I’m sorry, Mikasa, I thought they were the same ones you’d gathered. If she hadn’t eaten them first . . .”

“Hey, I recognized them.” She takes his hand and squeezes it. “But thank God you’re such a gentleman and refused to eat without me.”

He manages a smile. “My mother raised me right.”

“She did,” Mikasa agrees, stooping down to gather the berries up. “Your mother being a kickass woman has saved both our lives in these Games, did you know? Her industrial-strength knitting helped me keep smoke out of my lungs in the fire and prevented an extra tracker-jacker sting. And now this.”

“Thank you, Mom!” Eren shouts to the sky. Mikasa giggles. He looks down at her. “What’re you doing?”

She pulls the little pouch that Floch’d had out of her bag and scoops the berries in. “Maybe it’s a longshot, but if they killed Hitch, maybe they can fool Reiner.”

His eyes light up. “If we plant them like we accidentally dropped them or something, and he eats them . . .”

“Then it’s home, sweet home, for us.” She ties the bag to her belt. “Okay, let’s make a fire. If Reiner was anywhere nearby, he already knows where we are, ‘cause of the hovercraft. Might as well cook here.”

Eren shakes his head. “Can’t argue with that. I’m ready to get home.”

“Me, too.” Mikasa misses Izzy, Ben, Petra, and Historia like limbs. She misses her woods, and the cat and the goat and history homework that’s all propaganda, and the parties at the slag heap that she never wanted to be at. 

They build a fire, skin and cook her kills, but Reiner doesn’t show. They eat supper right where they are, a hearty meal of the rest of the stew, a roll and apple each, and one of her squirrels.

“You know, when I was dying in the mud,” Eren says conversationally, “I realized I was never gonna have one of your squirrels again and almost started crying.”

She looks up at him. “Huh?”

He takes a large bite. “Yeah. My mom buys them from you all the time, right? They’re a Jaeger house staple. This is gonna sound weird, but I was always like, smug? Whenever we ate your kills. Maybe proud is a better word. But I was always like, _yeah, that’s Mikasa Ackerman. She’s such a badass. I’m gonna marry her.”_

She blushes as red as her scarf. “You’re trying to kill me,” she complains. 

“I would never,” he says, just a touch too heavily to be a joke. 

They head back to the cave. Eren’s not walking any faster. Mikasa wishes she could get him into a tree, but it’s obvious that that’s not gonna happen. Besides, it means the cameras can get a good long shot of them walking hand-in-hand on the riverbank as the sun sets. That’s some quality romance, right there. It’s probably valuable, what with Mikasa nagging and screaming at him earlier.

It’s nice. It’s just . . . nice. Holding hands in the sunset, full bellies and warm hearts. When Eren’s name was called, she thought he was the last person she’d want in the arena with her. But now, circumstances being what they are, she can’t imagine going through this without him here with her.

They’re exhausted when they make it back to the cave. They curl up in the sleeping bag together. Eren’s much worse off than she is, so she takes the first watch. Her thoughts are loud again, and keep her awake until dawn comes. When she shakes Eren awake, he scolds her for letting him sleep so long. 

“I’m sleeping now,” she murmurs. She hides in his chest and plans not to come out for a long, long time. She has a bad feeling about today. “Wake me if something interesting happens.” Her dreams are full of discordant songbirds, and there’s a little girl wreathed in nightlock berries that keeps shifting between Louise, Isabelle, and Mikasa’s own nine-year-old self. She wakes in the afternoon, uneasy for good reason. 

“The river has dried up,” Eren tells her solemnly. He holds her hand carefully, like he’s afraid she might break. 

“Oh.” She swallows. “It’s today, then.”

“Yeah.”

Her heart skips and skitters. She drops her head onto Eren’s shoulder and lets him just hold her for a while. She both wants to go home as soon as she possibly can and never leave this cave. It’s become a little home, hasn’t it? They’ve been playing house here, playing at being his parents: the doctor and the doctor’s wife. This is where they had their first kiss. These rock walls have sheltered them from the cold and rain. It’s served them well. When they leave this cave, there’s no going back. 

“No point in drawing this out,” she mutters. 

“Not really,” he says. “We can if you like. Our water bottles are full. We probably have a day or so.”

“I’m not sure they’d let us wait that long,” she says. “They want us to go to the lake, right?”

“I’m guessing. Central location, open. Good for a climactic fight scene.” His voice sounds angry like she hasn’t heard since the rooftop.

“Let’s get going, then,” she says grimly. 

They eat a big meal--two rolls, the rest of the cheese, and an apple each. They even finish off the pudding. And then they gather up their supplies and go. Before they turn from the cave, Eren takes her face in his hands and kisses her, long and slow. Mikasa holds his wrists, her eyes screwed shut, and presses her lips together when he pulls away. “I’ve got you and you’ve got me,” he says against her mouth. 

“Right,” she says. 

It’s a long, long, hike to the lake. They travel the same route they went by yesterday. Eren is walking with a slight limp, now. She wishes she could hold his hand, but she can’t make herself not have her bow ready. It’s notched and half-drawn, pointed at the ground, leaving only six arrows left in her quiver. Seven shots. That’s what she has. Seven arrows to bring them home. 

Of course, she has Eren, too. She shouldn’t write him off. He’d killed Marcel, hadn’t he? A Career who’d trained all his life? When the fight comes, Eren will be just as much of an opponent for Reiner as she will be. 

Eren, whose steps are scaring away the animals. Eren, who nearly died protecting her. Eren, who saved her life that day when they were children. She still doesn’t know why he’d done that. One answer comes to her, but she pushes it away. _Eren isn’t in love with me,_ she reminds herself. And she’s not in love with him. It’s getting harder to remember that. When her first instinct is to lean into him, is it for her or for the cameras?

The sun is already beginning to set when they finally make it to the clearing where the Cornucopia sits. Eren visibly draws himself up as they step into the open, making himself seem bigger, like a bird fanning its wings. But no one comes for them. Mikasa double checks the inside of the Cornucopia, having learned her lesson, but they’re really alone. 

She and Eren head to the lake to wait. They kneel at the edge to fill up their water bottles and just stay there. Mikasa winds her fingers in the fringe of her scarf. “I don’t like that the sun is setting,” she says. “I don’t want to fight him after dark. We only have the one pair of glasses.”

“If it comes to it,” Eren tells her, “We can start a fire.” He nods at the woods. “Let’s give him half an hour or so.”

Mikasa looks at the woods. They’re positioned in such a way that one of them will absolutely see Reiner when he comes, and far enough away that they’ll have time to stand. In the trees, mockingjays flit around, singing back and forth to each other. On a whim, she opens her mouth and sings Louise’s song. _Quitting time._ Does Reiner recognize it?

They quiet for a moment. Mikasa repeats the tune into the silence, and then the mockingjays take to it. One sings, then another, and then the whole flock mimics her voice. They overlap and run around each other. The resulting harmony is strange but beautiful.

There’s a smile in Eren’s voice as he says, “What did I tell you? Just like your brother.”

She’s warm in the afternoon sun and Louise’s song makes her happy, so she leans her head against Eren and just basks in the brilliance, for a while. She keeps her eyes trained on the edge of the clearing, but it’s the mockingjays who warn her first. 

Their song begins to falter. Voice break off, notes half-finished. The birds start to shriek in alarm. Mikasa shoots to her feet, bow drawn tight, the moment before Reiner bursts through the treeline in a full sprint. 

Her first arrow hits him right in the center of his chest, and then, horribly, bounces off.

“Oh, what the fuck!” Eren demands.

“He’s got armour!” she says.

Furious, Eren raises his sword and shouts. Mikasa reaches around desperately for another arrow as Reiner barrels into them and—

—keeps running. 

“What the fuck?” Eren says again. 

_“RUN!”_ Reiner shouts. Their heads swing to follow him as he sprints for the Cornucopia. One arm makes a strange jerking motion, almost like he’s—gesturing for them to follow—

It hits both of them at the same second. If Reiner wasn’t running _to_ them, then he is running from something. They turn to run after him just as the first something leaps into the clearing.

 _“FUCK,”_ Eren says, shoving her hard toward Reiner. _“Go, go, go—”_

Mikasa grabs him and tugs, just to make sure he’s running too, and then, still moving, fires an arrow at one of the creatures coming for them. The arrow sinks into its eye and it drops instantly, but there are plenty more. She shoots another, hitting one in the skull, before Eren pushes her again, frantic.

 _“Fucking run!”_ Eren screams. “Get up, you can protect us when you’re _safe, go!”_

Mikasa curses and rips herself away from Eren, sprinting to the Cornucopia as fast as she can. Reiner is just scrambling over the top of it when she reaches the base and leaps up, bow slung over her shoulder, and begins climbing. The woven metal of the Cornucopia burns her hands, hot from the lingering heat of the sun that’s since set, but she doesn’t even care. She makes it to the top and draws an arrow. It’s meant for Reiner, lying on his side and heaving, limbs trembling, but it ends up in the chest of one of the creatures that was hot on Eren’s tail. 

_Eren._ He’s ten yards away from the Cornucopia, moving as fast as he can on his bad leg. The creature she shot thrashes as it dies, wounding a few of the others in its pack. It’s the most disturbing thing she’s ever seen. The things—some fresh horror cooked up by the Gamemakers for added excitement—are flesh-colored, huge monstrosities that have human features on a lumpy face. They can stand on their—back-paws/feet or scramble awkwardly but quickly on all fours. 

Eren makes it to the Cornucopia. He shoves his sword into his belt as he swings himself up, climbing as fast as he can. Mikasa throws herself forward and stretches her hand down; he grabs it and she yanks him up, adrenaline giving her the strength to make it nearly effortless. One of the creatures stands and swings a paw for him, catching him in his bad leg. Eren has to rip himself free with a cry before she’s able to pull him all the way to safety. 

Behind them, Reiner wheezes out, “Can they climb?”

The monsters are all standing, now. The three of them are twenty feet off the ground on top of the Cornucopia, and the tallest of the monsters is maybe fifteen feet tall. The smallest is less than half that, with dull coppery hair in a short bob and—

—and—

—and hazel eyes—

Mikasa screams. 

Eren grabs her, bewildered when he realizes that she hadn’t been caught. “It’s—it’s—” Her eyes well with tears. “Eren, that’s _Louise!”_

He does a double-take and gapes at the monsters now lolling around them in a circle, reaching for them lazily with clawed hands. They’re distorted and wrong, so wrong, unnatural and awful and not human, but each of them is recognizably one of their fellow tributes. There’s Annie, her blond hair glinting in the new moonlight. Behind her is Bertolt, towering over the rest with tiny, sunken green eyes. They’re all here--the boy she wrestled for the backpack with, the girl Eren killed the first night, Hitch, Tom. Mikasa can’t take her eyes off of Louise. 

Eren sounds almost sick as he says, “Are they—it can’t be their real bodies?”

The Bertolt one swings for them again and Mikasa skitters back, fumbling for her bow with clumsy fingers. It pushes past the smaller ones and stretches forward, reaching for them with clawed fingers. She shoots it— _four arrows left_ —and it topples to the ground, dying silently. The Annie one screams, a horrible, high-pitched shriek that seems to come from everywhere at once. It agitates the others and they writhe, reaching up for them with fervor. Another big one—that she recognizes with horror as Marcel—leans forward with huge, sharp fingers before Mikasa shoots it through the throat. Annie keeps screaming. Mikasa has to shoot her to shut her up. The rest quiet down, incapable of reaching them. 

They’re surrounded, but they’re safe. 

From the monsters. 

Mikasa is just reaching around for another arrow when Eren is pulled from her side. 

“Eren!” she cries. 

Reiner has Eren by the armpits. Eren manages to drive an elbow into Reiner’s face and they both fall, wrestling. Eren gets his sword out and Reiner knocks it out of his hand and to the ground. They’re thrashing too much for Mikasa to get a shot that won’t also hurt Eren, and she doesn’t trust herself to be more help than hindrance if she tries to fight Reiner off as well. One bad roll and they both fall over the edge and into the monsters. 

She keeps her arrow drawn taut, trained on the growling, spitting boys, but she’s unable to do a thing when Reiner finally manages to get Eren into a hold, his back to his chest and Reiner’s arms around his head. Reiner staggers to his feet, taking Eren up with him. 

Mikasa aims her arrow at his face, which surely has no armor under his clothes, but— she can’t. He has Eren in a chokehold. If she shoots him and he falls backwards, she kills them both. In turn, Reiner cannot kill Eren without guaranteeing his own immediate death. 

Mikasa and Reiner stare at each other, locked in their stalemate. “Reiner,” she growls. 

“Pleading won’t change anything,” he spits. His eyes are wild again, like they were when he let her live not thirty feet from this very spot, but now they’re hard as steel.

Eren is quickly running out of breath. This is a stalemate, but she’s the one on a time limit. Another few seconds and Eren will lose consciousness then die, and Reiner can continue to use his body as a shield. _His head,_ she thinks. _Why didn’t I shoot him in the head, back on the ground?_

“Mik—sa,” Eren rasps. He looks at her, and even though his face is turning pruple there’s a cold, cold look in his eyes as he makes a very deliberate X on Reiner’s hand. 

Without hesitation, Mikasa fires her arrow into Reiner’s hand. Eren slams his head back against him as Reiner releases Eren on reflex, and—

Reiner falls to the ground.

“Eren!” Mikasa says, grabbing him before he can follow. He slumps forward onto her, gasping for breath, and Mikasa realizes for the first time that he’s bleeding again. The whole floor of the Cornucopia is smeared with blood pouring from the wound in his leg. It’s opened again, and the monster had ripped both the bandages and a few fresh inches of his flesh away. 

On the ground, she can hear Reiner battling. He must have found Eren’s sword, or something, because he’s fighting them off. Mikasa doesn’t look, she can’t, but she hears him shouting and grunting, hears the eerily quiet monsters breathing hard. 

“Mikasa,” he says. “Tourn . . . quet . . . leg . . .”

“Okay, okay,” she says. All their supplies are at the lake—there’d been no time to grab them, why had they ever set them down? She unwinds her scarf, shivering when the frigid wind blows against her neck. The temperature has plummeted. She can see the clouds of her breath, and her teeth are chattering. 

Mikasa knows the basic idea of a tourniquet, and Eren talks her through the fine points of it. She has to use her last arrow to tighten the knot of her scarf just below his knee. She’s uneasy doing that—she might be killing his leg—but he insists. 

Reiner keeps fighting. Occasionally, there’s a thud as one of the monsters falls over dead, or the sound of Reiner trying to climb back up, or him screaming. Mikasa wonders how he can possibly fight this long until she remembers the armor. It’s no blessing anymore.

The anthem never plays. Reiner continues to fight, but from what she can hear, he’s losing. Eren’s face is stark white in the moonlight. He’s lost too much blood. Still, he’s trying to take care of her. 

“Mikasa,” he says. “Baby, you’re shivering, c’mere.” He unzips his jacket with trembling fingers and she plasters herself to him so he can zip them both up. She’s a little less cold for that, but still a long way from being warm. 

It’s a long, long night. The temperature continues to drop. Reiner continues to live, though only barely, and it’s clear soon that it’s agony. Eren keeps nodding off, and every time he starts, Mikasa screams for him. She’s so afraid that if he does fall asleep, he won’t wake up. If he dies here, now, against her, after everything, Mikasa knows that she’ll completely lose it. She’ll drive her arrow through her own heart and let whatever’s left of Reiner win. She is not going home without Eren. She won’t. She can’t. He holds her tightly, eyes shut tight, face hidden in her neck, teeth gritted. She can feel him mumbling, but it’s on the side of her bad ear and she can’t make out what he’s saying.

The moon creeps across the sky. Frost gathers on the Cornucopia. The cold sinks into the marrow of her bones, into the last dredges of her brain, driving out the memory of warmth. Reiner’s fighting cries eventually turn into moans of agony. That’s the worst part, for her. Mikasa doesn’t like pain, or injuries, and in a way she does like Reiner. His drawn-out death is torture. It feels like forever, those horrible hours, but eventually the sun begins to rise.

“Mikasa,” Eren says, loud enough to be heard. “I think he’s close by. Can you kill him?”

She says, “My last arrow is in your tourniquet.”

Eren unzips his jacket so she can move. “Then make it count.”

Mikasa pulls the arrow free and reties the scarf as tightly as she can, then crawls on frozen limbs to above where it sounds like Reiner is. When she picks him out among the bloody grass, he looks like a nightmare. He’s splayed on the ground, covered in blood, and the few remaining monsters are pulling bits of him off and eating him. Numb, Mikasa rubs warmth into her fingers and fires her last arrow, straight through his eye. 

The cannon fires. 

Eren crawls up behind her, leg dragging, and wraps his arms around her waist. “We win.” 

“We win,” Mikasa echoes hollowly. How could victory possibly feel like this? 

The remaining monsters fall over dead and begin to fall apart, steaming away. She guesses that’s where all the corpses went. She hadn’t bothered to notice before now.

. . . Shouldn’t the victory trumpets be playing now? She asks Eren as much. 

He rubs his forehead. His face is an ashy gray. “Do we have to get away from the corpse?”

Do they? Mikasa doesn’t remember if that’s how it usually goes for the last kill, but she can’t imagine another reason. Slowly, painfully, they slide down the Cornucopia and hobble to the lake, with all their supplies. Mikasa digs out her water bottle and drinks a few swallows before offering it to Eren. He’s bleeding again. If he doesn’t get back to the city, with all their fancy doctors, within the hour . . .

The hovercraft appears and takes Reiner’s body away. Mikasa sighs— _now_ they can go home—but it just disappears. Tears of frustration bubble up. What are they doing? Don’t they see Eren needs a doctor?

Well, if they’re not going to get him one right away, she’s still here. Mikasa looks around for a stick to fix his tourniquet and finds an arrow—the one that bounced off Reiner a thousand years ago. As soon as she picks it up, the voice of Nile Dok rings through the air.

“Congratulations to the final tributes of the Ninety-Ninth Hunger Games,” he says. “The previous rule change has been revoked. Upon closer examination of the rule book, it was determined there can be only one Victor. Good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favor.”

The words echo through her head and down to her heart numbly. The slow slide of realization crushes her under a heavy, bruising weight. _Of course,_ she thinks. Of course they were never both going to go home. Of course they were never going to win together. A horrible, sinking feeling comes over her and she stares Eren blankly.

For his part, Eren laughs once, hard. “Yeah,” he says. “That about tracks.” 

He stumbles toward her and Mikasa doesn’t think, she just skitters backward, mouth open. He looks at her, tears in his eyes and a horrible smile on his face. “You didn’t think—Mikasa. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

The tears finally spill over. “I’m not—I’m not gonna hurt you, either.”

“No. Come on. Do it,” he says. “Before they send those things back, or something. Please, Mikasa, I’m not—”

 _“I won’t!”_ she says. “I can’t. You do it!” She would rather die here than go home without Eren.

He laughs again. “No. Listen to me, you know they have to have a Victor. I came in here determined it would be you.” When Mikasa doesn’t budge, he sighs. “Fine. Take this.” And with that he pulls away her bloody scarf and his blood begins to gush down his leg again. 

Mikasa dives forward on her knees, desperately trying to tie it back. “Eren! You can’t do that to me, you can’t leave me here.” If Eren dies, she will never leave this arena. Not really.

“Hey.” He falls to his knees in front of her and catches her hands, bringing them to rest against his chest, the scarf clutched between their fingers. It’s her life, it’s his life, cradled between them. He smiles softly, throat working. “Listen, thank you. For everything you did to save me. I love you. I love you. You know that, don’t you? But they’re only gonna let one of us win, and I’m telling you, _I want it to be you._ I need you to go home and have a long, happy life.” He keeps talking, but Mikasa can’t hear what he’s saying. She watches him through a prism of tears, her head full of noise. 

_I can’t,_ she thinks hysterically. _I can’t, I can’t—he—he gave me this scarf, I CAN’T—_

As they did before, in front of Louise’s body, Eren’s words come back to her. _You know they have to have a Victor._

He’s right. The entire purpose of the Games is to have a Victor. If no one wins, then everyone loses, and no one quite so badly as the Gamemakers. If she and Eren both die . . . or it seems like they will . . .

Mikasa’s fingers pull away from Eren’s chest and fumble for the little bag, nearly forgotten, on her belt. The nightlock berries. Eren tries to stop her, exclaiming, but Mikasa looks at him and begs with her eyes, not daring to say it out loud, _Trust me._

Eren stares at her for a long moment and swallows. _Okay._

She tips the bag open into her cupped hand. Eren holds his own out for a handful and cups them carefully in one hand. He touches her chin with trembling fingers and kisses her, very gently, before he settles down. Mikasa follows suit. There’s enough space between them now that the cameras can see clearly what they’re doing. His free hand is still bunched in the bloody yarn his mother carefully wove all those years ago; she curls her grubby fingers over his. She feels like a child, knelt in the grass holding hands, and isn’t she? Isn’t she only sixteen?

“One,” she says quietly. 

Eren rubs his thumb along the curve of her wrist. “Two.”

She takes a deep breath. She might be wrong. They might both die. She finds she doesn’t care. “Three.”

She’s just brought her hand to her lips when the trumpets blast from everywhere, startling her into jerking and dropping the berries everywhere. 

“Stop, stop!” Nile Dok cries, frantic. “Ladies and gentlemen, I now present—the Victors of the Ninety-Ninth Annual Hunger Games: Eren Jaeger and Mikasa Ackerman, of the District of Shiganshina!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are a lot of things that I didn't expect chapter 138 to do, and one of them was to validate my crack headcanon that Eren is the type of person to go from "We haven't even admitted that we like each other" to "I am straight-up telling you that I want to marry you" in ten seconds flat. but here we are.
> 
> Bonus: Here’s the a one-shot scene of baby Eren falling in love https://archiveofourown.org/works/29990268/chapters/73835538


	10. but before i can fly up, i've loose ends to tie up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, fair warning--this does end the way that thg ends. there will be a happily ever after . . . but this isn't it, yet. 
> 
> Chapter title from "The Old Threadbare" by Suzanne Collins

Mikasa spits out the berries that hand landed in her mouth and wipes her tongue on her jacket. She rinses her mouth out with water before giving it to Eren, who’s doing the same thing. “You’re okay?” she demands. 

He spits out the water and pulls her into a hug. “I’m great. _You’re_ insane. I love you.”

She slumps onto him, and is hit with a wave of sound that’s nearly physical when the speakers play the sound of live applause from Mitras. Eren’s fingers tighten around her, but they’re weak. When the hovercraft appears over them and drops a ladder, Mikasa has to help Eren stand. Blood is pouring down his leg. Once they get a hand on the ladder each, an electrical current freezes them in place while they’re pulled up and into the craft. 

As soon as they’re in and the current releases them, Eren drops to the floor, unconscious. The scarf is still caught between his stiff fingers. 

“Eren!” she says, falling down beside him, hands fluttering for something to do, some way to fix it. Other hands clamp down on his shoulders and under his arms and rip him away from her. Mikasa screams, feral, and lunges for him, but more hands yank her back. They’re keeping her from him, they’re keeping him away from her, she’s so positive that they’re going to kill him and leave her alone that she bites a hand on her arm and breaks free, scrambling after Eren. 

She runs into a glass door and pounds on it while people—doctors, inhuman in sterile white bodysuits and masks—set Eren on a table and jab him with all sorts of things. 

“Eren!” she screams. “Eren! _Eren!”_

All she can say is his name. All she can _do_ is say his name and beat against a glass wall, desperate to get him back, watching in paralytic terror as his heart stops and they bring him back, back to her, back to life. Mikasa presses herself against the glass, unable to tear her eyes away. She’s convinced that if she looks away from him he’ll disappear. They operate on him for God knows how long, right up until the hovercraft lands. A door opens on their side of the glass and they wheel him out, still on the table hooked up to a million tubes and wires, the tails of her scarf flapping after him, and Mikasa begins to throw herself at the glass again until someone comes up behind her and jabs her with a needle, sending her directly into a dreamless sleep.

***

The next few days are a blur of waking up in a small, soft room restrained to a small, soft bed, panicking, and being knocked out by one of the tubes stuck in her arm. She doesn’t see anyone, has no one to tell her if Eren is even alive or not.

However long it is later, she wakes up unrestrained and sans all her IVs. Mikasa tries to throw herself out of bed but finds she’s barely able to get herself upright. As she presses her palms to her thighs, she notices how clean they are. Last time she saw her hands, they were covered in blood and dirt and grease. Now they’re perfectly clean, her fingernails even trimmed into perfect ovals. More than that, she’s troubled to discover that her hands are soft in a way she doesn’t think they’ve ever been. Her archery calluses have been sanded away, leaving her hands soft and vulnerable. 

In fact, when Mikasa inspects her body, she can’t find a single blemish on her skin. The burn scar is gone, as is the gash on her forehead. Even the faded pink scars on her knees from an active childhood are gone. Mikasa runs a hand through her hair, oddly upset by this, when something strikes her. She tests it again, rubbing at the area around her left ear, and it’s no illusion. She can hear again. 

They’ve fixed her up as good as new. The only signs she was in the arena at all is the weight she’s lost and that her hair now comes to just below her chin. They’ve cut her hair so that it’s even, now, not the choppy, lopsided mess that the fire left it. 

Mikasa slides out of bed on shaky legs. She dresses in the robe laid out for her and paces the walls, trying to find a door, before one opens at the opposite end of the room from where she is and she darts out. She follows the hallway, calling Eren’s name, until she reaches a chamber with other people inside it. 

None of them are Eren, but Mikasa is almost just as happy to see them. Hannes, especially. He stands up and grins at the sight of her, and Mikasa is so overwhelmed by memories of long-ago suppers and making s’mores in the backyard that she runs to him and flings herself into his arms like she’s eight years old again.

“Heya, junior,” he says, voice thick. “Whaddaya know? Welcome home.”

“Thank you,” she says, pulling back. “Hannes, is Eren—?”

“He’s fine, he’s fine, don’t worry. They want to have your reunion live.” He pats the top of her head. Hanji bounces up and joins the hug as well, chattering about how proud she is, and Oulo is there, too, tearfully petting her hair and saying how he just knew she had it in her.

Mikasa is so happy to see all of them. She’ll be so happy to see Eren. She’ll be so happy to see _Izzy,_ and baby Benny and Petra and Historia and Sonny and Bean. The meadow and the woods and her old home in the Victor’s Village. Oh, God, she’s gonna go _home._

“Where’s,” she sniffs. “Um, where’s my scarf?”

Hanji laughs. “Don’t worry, honey, Eren’s got it. They took it away to wash and then someone came up with the bright idea to have him give it back to you on air.”

“Okay,” Mikasa sighs. “Is that—when’s that? When do I see him?”

“Very soon. Here, here, eat your supper and then we’ll get started getting you ready.”

Supper is a vaguely disappointing meal of mashed potatoes and fried rice, but she finds her stomach has shrunk to the size of a walnut and she can barely manage the small serving that was given to her. Afterwards, Hanji escorts her back to the twelfth floor of the Tribute Center—the hospital is deep underground—and hands her off to the prep team. Mikasa is feeling so giddy she’s even happy to see them, the odd little ducks: Flegel, Carly and Caven. They gush over her, talking about how well she did and how much everyone loves her and how sensational the Games were. Their chatter quickly diminishes any fondness she was feeling for them, but it’s difficult to be angry with them. They’re like little animals; they don’t know any better.

When she’s deemed pretty enough for Hanji, the woman bounces into the room with what seems to be a gauzy yellow sundress and shoos the prep team out. Mikasa sends her a grateful look. “Am I still the girl on fire?” she asks.

Hanji’s eyes glint. “Oh, yes, dear.”

She helps Mikasa into the dress. It’s simple, gathered at the ribs with the hemline just above her knees and an illusion neckline. Hanji gives her a pair of black ballet flats and pulls most of her bangs into a thin braid, pinned to her temple by a simple black barrette. Before she turns around to face the mirror, Hanji pushes the top button and the fabric of her dress begins to glow. When she turns, the dress floats after her lazily. 

“Oh,” Mikasa says softly. Look at her. Most of her bangs, other than a few strands deliberately left out, are pulled into a thin braid and pinned to her temple, like how Eren did them in the arena. The minimal makeup the prep team put on her makes her eyes seem bigger and darker, rounds her hunger-panged face. Mikasa is tall, but her bones are built the same delicate way that Levi’s and Izzy’s are, and this dress seems to accentuate that. The way it hangs off of her is lovely, but it makes her look smaller. The glowing fabric ripples with every little movement, changing colors just a little. It’s like she’s wearing candlelight. 

She looks . . . young. Everything Hanji’d dressed her in before had made her look older. This is such a jarring departure that it makes Mikasa uneasy.

“One more thing,” Hanji says, and produces, to Mikasa’s surprise, Louise’s mockingjay pin. She fixes it over Mikasa’s heart, right where she would put her fist to salute. “It was good luck in the arena, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” she says. “Do you think I’m going to need luck?”

Hanji looks at her meaningfully. “The Games aren’t over yet, hon. Can’t be too careful.” Then she brightens. “Ooh, but you’re golden! They _love_ you Mikasa, these are the best-rated Games in history. Just keep being yourself and you’ll do brilliantly, I know it.”

Mikasa swallows. They take the elevator down, coming to a room that seems hastily-constructed. Mikasa looks around, alone in this strange, small space that smells like fresh paint, guessing she’s directly under the stage at the bottom of the Tribute Center. Normally, the Victor’s team, and then the Victor, is lifted to the center of the stage on a platform, but since there are two of them this year, they must have had to rethink that.

She sits impatiently, tapping her foot, spinning Louise’s pin for a long few minutes before the door opens again and Hannes comes in. She shoots to her feet as he does, and when he opens his arms, she walks right in. 

“Hey, junior,” he says quietly, but instead of being affectionate like last time, now his voice is urgent. His mouth is tucked into her hair, hiding his words. “Listen up. They’re not happy with you. That stunt with the berries? You showed them up, you realize that? Made Mitras look like a joke, bending to the whims of a couple of heart-eyed brats.”

Her heart thunders in her chest. 

“Your only defense for your stunt with the berries is that you’re so goddamn in love you can’t be held accountable for your own actions. Do you understand?”

“I know,” she says, because there’s nothing blocking her mouth. She forces herself to pull away smiling. “Did you tell Eren?”

“Nah,” he says, looking her up and down with a parental sort of affection. “No need, you know?” He kisses her on the forehead and leaves the way he came. 

Mikasa’s knees are knocking. Her skirt doesn’t cover it. She guesses this was the point of this gauzy, girlish outfit: to make her look young and fragile and irresponsible. If Mitras has it out for her . . . this is what Hanji had meant when she’d said the Games weren’t over yet. They might have barely begun. If they’re not over yet, she’s still in danger, and so is Eren, and so is her family back home. 

Mikasa hadn’t _meant_ to make Mitras look bad! She’d only been thinking of how to save herself and Eren. But the Games are Mitras’s weapon, and to force it to bend is to spit on Mitras itself. So now the city will pretend the love story was all their idea, and if Mikasa doesn’t help them, then everyone she loves will die. 

And Eren. This affects him, too. He has to play along as well. But Hannes hadn’t told him? _No need, you know?_ Why was there no need? Eren _isn’t_ actually in love with her. He’s not. He’s—he’s always been better at this. Knowing just how to play the cameras. The whole thing was his idea, for God’s sake—of course he knows to keep it up. And he’s always seemed to hold a deeper understanding of what’s going on. His voice echoes in her head. _I don’t want to die as something they made me._

Now, he’ll have to live as something they did. They both will. For a little while, at least.

When the anthem starts to play, it’s so loud it shakes the rafters of the dark little room. The applause is easily heard even from here. Mikasa imagines her prep team, and Eren’s, bowing happily. Hanji and Eld get thunderous applause, as they should. Oulo goes up next, and Mikasa is sure he’s crying proudly. This is the first year he’s had a winning tribute, and it’s historic. And Hannes’s applause lasts for at least five minutes. She’s so glad he warned her. She needed to know. The stomping and clapping and cheering so intense that the floor under her feet wobbles. And then she realizes the ground isn’t just wobbling, it’s _rising,_ and Mikasa is being lifted into the brilliant light and deafening applause.

She blinks against the stage lights, and there—there’s Eren. He’s so clean and healthy and strong that she hardly recognizes him, but she’d know those eyes and that smile anywhere. Mikasa launches herself into his arms just as he reaches for her. He staggers back as she half-tackles him, but then his arms come up around her back and he kisses her senseless. Something is bunched in his hand, but she doesn’t dare break away to find out what. She’s so dizzy with everything—the light, the sound, Hannes’s warning and her fear over it, and Eren’s solid presence, alive and well and kissing her soundly—that she can’t form a single coherent thought. She’s just a whirlwind of emotion, and she pours all of it into Eren’s open mouth.

The audience is losing their minds. At one point, Pixis taps Eren on the shoulder and Eren just shoves him back without acknowledging his existence. A fresh wave of hysteria sweeps over the crowd, and Mikasa sighs with relief. Eren knows what he’s doing. 

After maybe ten minutes, Hannes grabs Eren by the collar and her by the shoulder and physically yanks them apart. The look Eren shoots him is nothing short of murderous, but Mikasa forces a laugh and drags him to the couch opposite Pixis’s chair. Normally there’s a traditional, throne-like chair for the Victors, but today there’s a low, soft love-seat. Mikasa presses up against Eren, but then she catches Hannes’s eye from where he’s sitting just off the stage, and knows it’s not good enough. She toes her shoes off and tucks her feet up, leaning on Eren’s shoulder.

“Wait a sec, wait a sec,” he says, laughing. “Babe, look, look, I’ve got—” he finally takes his hand off her back and holds up her scarf. Her eyes water and she reaches for it, but Eren says, “Wait, come on, let me make up for last time.” He leans forward and actually wraps the scarf around her, not just throwing it at her like he had seven years ago. Mikasa’s so warm she might catch on fire. The stage is hot under the lights, so the scarf of really only hanging around her shoulders, but it’s familiar weight tethers her solidly to the earth.

“I should’ve done this that first time,” he says. Mikasa grabs him by the shirt and kisses him again, and Hannes jumps up _again_ to break them apart. 

“Goddamnit, old man!” Eren shouts. “What do you have against love?!”

“We have to start the show!” Hannes calls as he walks back, but he gives them a subtle thumbs-up. 

“Thank you, Eren,” Mikasa says. 

Eren melts instantly, sinking back against the couch. He automatically wraps an arm around her shoulders and she takes his other hand in both of hers, resting over his knee. 

“Welcome, welcome, people of Paradis!” Dot Pixis says. “I wish we had more time, but as our beloved Hannes said, we are already off-schedule! Without further ado, I give you: the Ninety-Ninth Annual Hunger Games!”

Then the lights dim and the screens all around her come to life, showing the three heads of Paradis’s national crest and then the wings of Shiganshina. The three-hour highlights reel of the Ninety-Ninth Hunger Games is required viewing across the country. No blackouts tonight. 

It’s a strange thing, to watch herself on a screen in time with the rest of the country. She wonders what it had been like for Levi, nineteen years ago. He was only a year older than her, then, and he’d been completely alone. How had he ever done this alone? 

It feels like that’s someone else on the screen, acting in a play. The reel takes the footage of more than three weeks, from the reaping in Yalkell up until right now, and condenses it into a neat little narrative. Usually, they’re success stories—Levi’s had been that of a terrifying dark horse—but this year, for the first time in nearly a century, they’re telling a love story. They don’t show half of the tributes being reaped, but they show every moment from Oulo calling Isabelle’s name right through Eren shaking her hand. Romantic music swells as they ride through the city aflame, holding hands. 

Whoever put this together didn’t have a very hard time spinning it into a love story, and that is entirely thanks to Eren. For the first week and a half in the arena, all Mikasa did for their narrative—other than the one conversation with Louise about the scarf—was manage to not kill Eren. And not for lack of trying, when you take the nest into account. But Eren—everything he did was for their love story. Joining the Career pack and lying to them about her, staying awake, hand on his sword, the entire night below the tree, fighting off Marcel, and even when he was in the mudbank, he’d murmur her name as he slept. When he killed the girl from Karanes, he’d knelt down and told her, “I have to protect the girl I love. You get it, right?”

Members of the audience actually sigh when he says that. Mikasa’s stomach roils. She’s glad that he did it, and he’d killed the girl mercifully, but it still upsets her in a way she can’t quite identify. She can’t quite reconcile the cold look in his eyes as he’d slit that girl’s throat while she begged with the boyish, handsome grin that lights up his face when he looks at her, or the lazy affection with which he noses at her temple. 

Mikasa is the focus for a bit as she teams up with Louise. They lean hard into Mikasa bonding with her, the commentators playing it up as more maternal than friendly. Maybe that’s how it had been. Mikasa goes completely numb watching it. It’s either that or burst into tears, and that wouldn’t be a good move. As Louise cries and begs her to take the pin and the luck, makes her promise to win, Mikasa, as helpless as she was the first time she watched that little girl die, breaks and hides her face in Eren’s shoulder. He soothes her quietly, stroking her hair, while she sings her friend to sleep, and then the footage cuts straight to Mikasa alone in the forest. 

Of course. Because burying her was an act of rebellion, too. That one had even been intentional.

Mikasa begins contributing to the love story the second they announce the rule change, when she calls Eren’s name into the night. Tracking him down, nursing him back to health, risking her life for his medicine. Her fight with Annie, and Reiner letting her live, have an epic soundtrack under them that, combined with the knowledge of their final battle, elevates it to glory. The kisses and cuddles and pillow talk in the cave are all featured, and Mikasa thinks she was convincing enough, between all the blushing and stuttering. The fight with Reiner and the monsters is horrible, but again, Mikasa’s brain completely shuts down. 

The audience hushes each other when the berries scene begins, but when it ends, the movie doesn’t. Mikasa thanks God and whoever put this film together for ending it not there, but including shots of her screaming Eren’s name and trying to get to him while the doctors operate, and then shots taken just a few hours ago of her calling for Eren as she walks around the halls in a bathrobe, asking her team where he is, and then, finally, their reunion kiss. 

When the lights come back on, it’s time for them to be crowned. A little girl—she thinks maybe the President’s own granddaughter—comes forth carrying a cushion. There’s only one crown, a heavy black circlet with delicate golden embellishing that almost resembles flame. President Fritz splits the crown in half and places one on Eren’s head with a grandfatherly smile. Then he turns to Mikasa. 

His eyes are as cold as ice. Mikasa knows, in that second, that he blames her. Even though Eren would have eaten the berries too, it was her idea. It was her rebellion. Whatever trouble there is, it will fall on her head. 

The rest of the night is a blur. They’re taken to the Presidential Palace for a feast in their honor. Mikasa thinks of Levi again. How had he done this alone? Without Eren here, holding her down, she thinks she would simply disappear. As it is, she’s plastered to his side the whole night, holding his hand or his elbow or tucked beneath his arm. She keeps a smile on her face as a thousand people ask for their picture, their autograph, for a quick word. Their sponsors, influential people who bet on them, politicians and celebrities, even some of the Gamemakers. A tall man with the most impressive eyebrows she’s ever seen shakes her hand and tells her she made her district and her brother proud, then disappears into the crowd after giving her a traditional Shiganshina salute. That throws her for a loop, but she has no time to process it before more admirers come through.

When they finally make it back to their suite in the Tribute Center, it’s already dawn. Mikasa and Eren sleep on each other like puppies for the car ride back, and when they’re back in the suite, she clings to him out of habit before Hannes pries her off and sends her back to her room alone. 

“Why?” she whines. “I wanna talk to him.”

“There’ll be time for that later,” Hannes says. “When _I_ don’t have to hear it. Thin walls, junior.”

Her cheeks burn at the implication, but he’s obviously telling her that she’s being spied on. She sleeps fitfully in the giant, soft bed for a few hours before her prep team gets her up and readies her for the final interview.

It’s just this, and then she can go home. But this might be the most crucial bit of it all. Tonight is when, under direct prodding, she has to sell the act of a girl so in love she was out of her mind with it. 

When she finally sees Eren again, heartbreakingly handsome in a white suit, she thinks it won’t be all that hard. She walks into his arms and kisses him on the mouth. Habit, again. It grounds her. Eren cups her bare neck and hums into her mouth. “I missed you,” she says. 

“Missed you, too.” She wraps her arms around his neck. Eren sways them back and forth a little. He skims the side of his nose against hers. “I can’t wait until we get home and I can get you alone.”

Mikasa shudders. She rocks forward onto her toes to lean closer into him. She’s in flats and a sundress again, and Eren is in boots. She guesses they still want to make her look as small as possible. Eren is only around three inches taller than her, but he’s broadly built and demands more space than he actually takes up. She thinks maybe she looks delicate next to him. It’s funny, because he’s always made her feel strong.

Somebody ushers them onto the stage. There’s no live audience tonight, just a few cameras. Mikasa curls back up under Eren’s arm as someone counts backward from ten, and then they’re live on every screen across Paradis. 

The interview doesn’t ever manage to get awkward, even though neither she nor Eren are very good at talking about themselves. They turn out to be alright at talking about each other. Pixis is perfect, as usual. He makes jokes for them and gets choked up when the occasion calls for it. He does a bit about giving Eren advice, as someone who’s had three wives. Eren responds perfectly by saying, “Uh, no offense then, sir, but I’m not gonna risk that.” Mikasa is so pleased that she kisses him. 

“Well, good for you boy!” Pixis laughs. “You’ve found your one true love, haven’t you?”

“I found her when I was five,” Eren says proudly. “It’s just that now I’ve finally got her.”

Mikasa blushes. 

“That’s right!” Pixis says. “Love at first sight for you, you said. And that was a treat, truly. But, Mikasa, I think the real drama for us was watching you fall in love. Tell me, when did you realize?”

She laughs nervously. “Oh, um. Well, like I said, you know, I didn’t wear his scarf for seven years and not feel _anything_ for him. But whenever I tried to talk to him, or even catch his attention, he’d act like I wasn’t there. So I never thought . . . And then when we got in the arena, I was trying to put it out of my mind, because if I did care for him then that was just heartbreak waiting to happen . . .” she trails off. Not good enough. She needs a better answer than that, but she doesn’t _have_ one. 

“You know when it hit me?” Pixis asks. “When you called his name out in that tree.”

 _Thank you!_ “Yes, I think that was it. Everything changed then.”

“What changed?” Pixis asks, rapt. 

“Well—it was the first time there was a chance that I might get to keep him.”

From where he stands behind the cameras, Hannes’s shoulders sag with relief. She said the right thing, then. Thank God. 

Grinning, Eren presses his nose to her temple. “So, I’ve got you and you’ve got me. What’re you gonna do with me now?”

She turns into him, humming. “Wrap you up and put you somewhere you can’t get hurt.”

They come together in a kiss, Eren cupping her cheek with the hand on her shoulder. They’re more sensible tonight, and pull apart after a few seconds. Pixis is sniffing back real tears across from them, and he has to blow his nose in his handkerchief before he can take the natural segue into all their injuries. They spend a minute on the girl on fire’s burns before he asks Eren how he’s liking his new leg, and Mikasa feels the world tilt.

“Huh?” she says. 

Sheepishly, Eren tugs the leg of his pants up a few inches to reveal shiny plastic and metal where there was once flesh. “Ta-da,” he says. “I hadn’t had a chance to tell you yet.” 

Mikasa can’t help it, she starts to cry a little. 

“Oh, no,” Eren says, horrified. “No, hey, Mikasa, it’s fine. I’m fine, see?” He kicks the leg a few times. 

“It’s my fault,” she says, one hand over her mouth. “I wasn’t able to get you up fast enough, and that monster got you—and then the tourniquet—”

He cuts her off. “You saved my life with that tourniquet. I told you to use it. And the monster—babe, the way I remember it, you dragged me up five feet with your superstrength. It’s your fault I’m _alive.”_

Mikasa hides her face in his shirt. Pixis and Eren work together to try and lure her out of it, but it takes a few minutes, and even once they do, she stays draped half-over Eren’s chest, ear over his beating heart. It all sort of catches up with her, how close he was to dying, how close she was to losing him, and it’s hard to keep her composure. The men give her a while, Eren answering for both of them and stroking her hair, until finally the unavoidable question comes up.

“Mikasa,” Pixis says. “I don’t want to upset you anymore, sweetheart, but I have to know . . . when you pulled out those berries, what were you thinking?”

Mikasa wipes her eyes and sits up a little but doesn’t succeed in fully prying herself off of Eren. This is it. This is the moment she has to nail. But she’s so wrung out that all she says is, “Um. I don’t know that I was, really. I just . . . I couldn’t . . . go on without him. I wouldn’t have been able to.”

Eren inhales sharply and bumps her forehead again. “You don’t have to.”

With that, Pixis signs off. Everyone laughs and cries and hugs everybody else, because now it’s time for them to go back home. They’re driven to the train station and boarded on while a crowd cheers and cries to send them off. They wave as they pull away, holding hands, and it’s a warped, reverse version of their chariot ride. When their train reaches the tunnel through the Sina mountains, Mikasa collapses into a chair. She doesn’t move until dinner.

It’s a heavy, happy meal, just her and Eren and Hannes and Oulo. They’re all pretty quiet. Mikasa is sure that like her, Eren and Hannes are preoccupied with thoughts of home, and Oulo—who knows why Oulo has shut up finally. She doesn’t spare much thought for him, too busy with thoughts of Isabelle and Ben and Petra and Historia and Sonny and Bean and the sunflower quilts in the house she’d grown up in. Is she really going home? She’s going to take Izzy and Petra back, finally give baby Benny the life that had been stolen from him before he was ever born? How will she go back to that house without Levi there with her? How did she ever bear to leave it?

Sometime after dinner, after she’s showered and changed out of her dress into pajamas, the train stops to refuel and Eren drags her outside for a walk in the starlight. He’s almost giddy, and she guesses she understands. They’re so close to home. 

Mikasa doesn’t know what’s going to happen when they get home. Even when they drop the act, she and Eren will be friends, won’t they? They’ll have to be. They didn’t go through this together to not be friends. She’s always wanted to be Eren’s friend. 

So why does the thought make her want to throw up? 

When they reach the end of the train, Eren picks up a bellflower and hands it to her, beaming. 

“Thank you,” Mikasa says, taking it. And then, before she even knows what the hell she’s saying, she adds in a rush, “Thank you, Eren, you saved us both. I can’t believe that worked. Did you have any idea it would work so well?”

He blinks at her. “Huh?”

Her throat is dry, like her body is doing its best to make her shut up. _What is she doing?_ “The whole star-crossed-lovers idea.” She winds her fingers into the fringe of her scarf. “It was your plan, right?”

His smile is slowly sliding off his face. “What do you mean?’”

“The . . . I mean, the whole thing.” She nods at the space between them. “The star-crossed-lovers act.”

 _“Act?”_ he repeats. The single syllable begins incredulous and finishes angry. “Mikasa. What the fuck are you talking about. Were you— _fucking faking_ everything in the arena?”

She flinches back. “I . . . I thought that was . . . I thought we were . . .”

But it’s clear that she was wrong. _Oh, no, oh no oh no._ He hadn’t been lying, then. He had been telling the truth back then, all the way back from their first interview. And she—and she had been so convinced otherwise, had been trying so hard to convince herself otherwise because he couldn’t possibly love her, but _has_ she known? How long has she known? And now—

"You—" he says. The look on his face is the most terrible thing she’s ever seen. He’s confused and hurt, but with each passing second that gives way to anger. Her jaw clenches, his fingers curl—but then his face crumbles back to pain. She thinks she even sees tears in his eyes. Horrified, she tries to take his hand, but he jerks away from her as if her touch burned. 

_“Don’t,”_ he chokes. “Don’t you—” He staggers back from her, and then, that awful look on his face, he turns on his heel and walks away. 

Mikasa wants to chase after him more than she’s ever wanted anything, but her feet are glued to the spot. She realizes that she’s shaking. It’s not until Hannes comes out a few minutes later that she’s able to move again. 

“I ruined everything,” she whispers. “I didn’t mean to. Hannes, I . . .”

He wraps his arm around her and guides her back onto the train. “Oh, junior. It’ll be okay.”

She shakes her head, flinging tears off her face. “It won’t,” she chokes out. “I thought . . . I didn’t know. And I wasn’t acting, not for all of it—but we’ve never _spoken,_ Hannes, he’s not being _fair!”_

“He’ll come around,” he promises. “Give him a little bit and then talk to him properly when you’ve both got your heads on a little straighter.”

She holds on tight to that hope, but Mikasa doesn’t see Eren until the next afternoon, right as they pull into Shiganshina’s train station. He looks at her with nothing but detachment. It’s the same look that had been on his face when he killed the girl from Karanes, or when he made that X on Reiner’s hand. That scares her—not because she fears he might hurt her, but she sees how deeply she has hurt him.

“Give me your hand,” he says, voice hollow. “Cameras will be rolling. Gotta give them a good show.”

She takes his outstretched hand. 

His fingers are cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thus ends part one. I . . . am sorry. feel free to yell at me.
> 
> Really though, thank all of you for your comments, y'all have been _so_ kind, thank you so much. 
> 
> 1\. is the breakup fast? yes, but that's because eren jaeger is not peeta mellark, and he wouldn't try to listen calmly while mikasa/katniss stuttered through a terrible explanation and then fell silent. he gets hurt, he _reacts_ , and he reacts violently. him just leaving her there was the best outcome to that conversation there was.
> 
> 2\. is mikasa a little too dense about her own feelings here? yes. But she must be, for plot reasons. And the poor girl is coming off some intense trauma and she's super confused about what has been happening between her and this boy she's cared about for seven years that she assumed wanted nothing to do with her. 
> 
> Also, as I said in a comment, I genuinely kind of think that Eren's feelings for Mikasa have been at least partially romantic in nature since they've known each other and he understands this, he just never did anything about it because he had other priorities/he was fifteen and had his head up his ass/he found out that he was on a clock that was winding down fast. In the same vein, I don't think Eren _knew_ for a fact how Mikasa felt about him until after their scene in 123, probably when Zeke tells him that there's no such thing as an Ackerbond. If he knew that she was in love with him, I don't think he would have asked her what he was to her. 
> 
> Meanwhile, I think Mikasa toppled headfirst into love with Eren the second he gave her his scarf, but she was so extremely traumatized and young that she didn't know that, and it took her _years_ to understand this because So Much was happening. 
> 
> I could go on about this for ages.Message me on tumblr @notcarlosshair if you want to hear about it, or if you want to scream about eremika or aot in general, or just to say hi. Anyway, I saw lolkasa's eremika catching fire art while i was in that headspace and this au basically sprung fully formed into my head. This fic is kind of my manifesto for this interpretation.
> 
> 3\. angst is fun to write. :3 but this _will_ have a happy ending--it will be happier than both thg and aot. I promise. no love triangle means less angst for eren. 
> 
> see y'all soon. 
> 
> Thank you again!


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